Hello, everybody, thank you very much for joining us for our business update call on our 2022 activities. As usual, I'm here with John Molot, Burford's Chief Investment Officer, and Jordan Licht, Burford's Chief Financial Officer, and both of them are gonna talk to you separately. I'm going to lead off and spend a little bit of time starting on slide four after you get through the disclaimers. With that slide up, I'm really excited to be talking to you about two quite different things today. First of all, on the business itself, we are really feeling that the pandemic is moving into the rearview mirror for litigation and for courts. We had a really nicely strong 2022. $350 million of cash realizations, up 33%. Record-breaking new business.
$1.2 billion of new group-wide commitments. Balance sheet deployments that have more than doubled over the last two years. We had a real growth in the modeled value of our balance sheet portfolio. That grew by $800 million last year at 21% growth rate. We raised more than $1 billion of new capital during the course of 2022, and we ended the year with a strong cash and liquidity position that Jordan will talk more about. What we're really excited about, notwithstanding the fact that 2022 was a really nice, good catch-up year and a strong year for us, we're really excited about 2023. The courts are back fully in operation. We are seeing that reflected now in some numbers.
For example, we've got more than 30 final merits hearings or trials already scheduled during the course of 2023, and that compares to only 10 such hearings occurring in 2021 and only 11 last year. That's a really strong beginning to the year, and it makes us optimistic that we're gonna get back into the groove that existed before the pandemic. 2023 has also begun very well. We've had several case successes already, a $90 million settlement, a $67 million trial win, a $52 million arbitration award for one of our managed funds. The world has just come back to life. Courts are back doing their thing.
On top of all that, while this is not a source of great happiness for us or for you in other quarters, the world economy is obviously not in its most robust state, and that leads to opportunity for us. The simple reality is that, you know, when things are going wrong for businesses, when interest rates are rising, when there's corporate stress out there, that leads to disputes. Those disputes lead to opportunity for us. We're pretty optimistic about where things stand on the back of what was already a strong 2022. Second of all, we're excited about what's going on with our fair value accounting. That's a both a wonky and a somewhat eccentric sentiment, as I'm sure that many investors read our release and instead reacted to words like SEC and delay.
We have been living the quixotic nature of fair value for the last 14 years in this asset class, and we've been doing that without having a North Star. That's led to us spending more time talking about accounting and less time talking about the merits of our business than we would've liked. Now, we do see a North Star, and that's thanks to some significant engagement by the senior staff of the SEC. We have high hopes of a clear, fair value approach that should become the industry standard and will let us never again have to talk about accounting standards on an earning call. We've been engaged constructively with the SEC for around six months now, and we feel good about where we are, which will result in some methodological change, but will still anchor our asset values to case events.
At bottom, what's really going on here is fundamentally an inversion. Instead of starting at cost or present value and adding value as we progress through case events, which is what we do today, we're talking about starting with a future value and discounting it back, but again with meaningful changes in value only driven by case events. The beginning and the end points of that spectrum remain the same under either approach. Of course, it would've been too much to ask to have this happen last spring in good time for a relaxed year-end. Instead, we have it happening in real time, and that means we will be providing our audited statements later than usual, although we hope to have them out in 45 to 60 days.
As you know, we manage the business on a cash basis, not an accounting one, and we can't spend fair value. All the numbers we're providing to you today are cash numbers. This delay doesn't have any impact on us as we run the business, and we think you should regard it as a long-term positive for the business just as we do. I can't really emphasize that enough that I am delighted with the idea of moving to clarity on this question and really putting it behind us as one of the growing pains associated with this business and this industry. As I said, you know, we continue to run the business on a cash basis, and none of this accounting dynamic has any effect at all on us as a cash basis.
After we go through this presentation, we're happy to answer your questions about all of this within obviously the limitations of what we can say while we're in an ongoing process. Turning to slide five, we thought it was useful to set out crisply the four things you get when you buy Burford stock, what we're basically calling the four pillars of value. To begin with, we have what is now an enormous core portfolio of litigation assets. You know, we model those assets as we've described before, and as John and Jordan will discuss in more detail. That portfolio, excluding our YPF assets, right now shows an expected value of $4.6 billion at year-end.
We've been consistently producing high returns across the capital that we have deployed into that portfolio with now a cash track record that's well in excess of $2 billion. Pillar number one is you're getting an existing book of desirable investments. Pillar number two is you're getting an origination platform. We're the industry's market leader. We have significant scale, and we've demonstrated over and over again our ability to put a lot of new business through that origination platform, more than $1 billion in each of the last two years. We do that with a global presence. We do that, again, with our clear industry leadership, with our relationships, with our brand, and with our share of voice in the industry.
The third thing you get is the industry's leading asset manager with, we've raised almost $4 billion in investment funds over time. Those funds not only augment our balance sheet capital, but they enable us to provide other opportunities to investors, that let us really cover the waterfront, cover the gamut of what, of what our clients need and provide investors with a wide range of risk and return opportunities. Finally, we have what really you could almost argue is a free option on the YPF-related assets. We've already made a significant amount of cash profit from the YPF cases, and we're waiting for an outcome of them, which of course, if it is positive and in our favor, could be of substantial value. Really, Burford gets you those four things all together in one package.
There's nowhere else you can get those things, either in the scale or quality that we provide, and we're really excited to be able to show you what we can do with them going forward. With that, I'll turn it over to Jordan.
Thank you, Chris, and great to join the team and be with you here today. I'm turning to slide six, and this slide shows our cumulative returns since inception. Most of you have seen this slide before, but it's great to reiterate the story. Burford Capital has consistently earned high returns that are uncorrelated to the economy or market fluctuations. We have a 14 year track record of very strong returns with $2.2 billion in cash realizations, an 88% cumulative ROIC and a 29% IRR. In my first few months, I saw the power of the business represent itself in short order. The global antitrust portfolio matter that we've discussed previously had a significant partial realization with an impressive 42% IRR. The ROIC was 48%, which is what we would anticipate when litigation resolves fast.
It's exciting to see the power of the business producing significant cash on cash returns. Moving to slide seven, another slide that you've seen before. This demonstrates the favorable returns of the asset class. We outline our track record in a different way here, and there are a couple of key takeaways to point out. We win much more often than we lose. There's positive asymmetry on the size of our returns that skews toward the cases we win. Finally, it shows the repeatable nature of earning high returns. We have now had 30 matters conclude with ROICs greater than 200%, including four in 2022. I know not every case wins, but when we experience a loss, it's not necessarily a total loss of capital. I wanna point out the bullet on the side of the page that illustrates this nicely.
On the 16% of losses, we still recouped 42% of the deployed cost. Let's flip to slide eight. We've updated the output of our proprietary probabilistic model for year-end 2022. Quick note, this page is based on the Burford-only capital provision-direct portfolio, excluding the YPF-related assets. Let's start on the column furthest to the right. You can see the implied realizations from the model and the implied performance fee income both increased in 2022. Implied realizations at year-end were $4.6 billion, up from $3.8 billion previously. The implied performance fee income, which includes income from BOFC, is $500 million, up from $400 million. The implied ROIC has remained relatively steady at around 140%.
As we've said before, this return figure is greater than our historical level, mainly driven by our putting on larger cases, including monetizations and claims families, which we believe tend to have higher returns. It's important to make sure that we understand the impact of these numbers changing over time. As we continue to refine and improve our model, we could see these numbers move around. While it's great to see the anticipated gains of the portfolio rising, there are times when it will decrease. For example, as assets in the portfolio convert to realizations, which would be a positive for the company, it would be removed from the model portfolio. Moving forward to the next slide, we have a fantastic origination platform. Great brand and a great track record. History of innovation.
Regular interactions with almost the entire top 100 U.S. law firms, and a global presence that meets our clients' needs all over the world. A team that is steeped in commercial litigation that combines financial and structuring acumen with a database of 14 years of results. All this manifests itself in putting capital work. In 2022, we added record levels of new commitments and deployments, and more of those potentially higher returning assets are going to our balance sheet. As we've increased the portion of our originated core legal finance assets that are allocated to the balance sheet. We also believe that we deployed capital into high-value assets in 2022, as we've added $900 million in modeled realized gains this year from new business.
This figure represents both deployments from commitments made in 2022, including deployments already made in the year, and commitments from prior year vintages that converted from discretionary to definitive commitments. As Chris mentioned, we look forward, and we're excited not only about the potential for realizations as court backlogs ease, but also the opportunity to continue to originate new, high quality, high returning core litigation finance assets. With that, I'll turn it over to John to talk about the portfolio.
Thanks, Jordan. Thanks to you all for joining. It's great to speak with you. I think we were able to recruit Jordan, who's a fabulous CFO because we have this amazing portfolio with a very attractive, interesting profile. I just wanna talk a little bit more about the portfolio and where it's poised at this moment. As Chris said at the beginning, the portfolio is poised to deliver more results than it historically has. You just look at the bullets on the left that Chris alluded to earlier that like we've got more than 30 trials and final merits hearings already scheduled for this year, as compared to 11 for last year and 10 the year before.
It's just so much more activity than we have seen. It's just a big uptick. The COVID delays really do appear to be behind us. The logjam is breaking. Just in the first two months of this year, we had a trial verdict that, if affirmed, would deliver $67 billion to Burford. We had a settlement that did deliver $90 million in cash to Burford. We had an arbitration win that would deliver $52 million to one of our private funds. 2022 was more active than 2021, right? We did see a 20% increase in resolution, 60 versus 50. There's much more poised to happen still in 2023 than there was in 2022.
If you turn to slide 11, you can see graphically, there's a lot of information on this slide, but you can see sort of what we've done so far and what we are poised for in the future. The bottom horizontal line, the black with the white figures, that basically shows our IRR per vintage and shows positive returns across vintages that are quite attractive. You can see another representation of that positive performance by comparing the black vertical bars above to the red vertical bars above. The black ones are the money that's went out the door in deployments, and the red are the realization. That's the money that came back, and we're very pleased that the red bars are larger than the black bars.
What I'm really interested in is the gray shaded vertical bars because that's the money we've put out the door in matters that haven't yet concluded, and that's what is poised to deliver in 2023 and beyond and what I'm very optimistic about. I joke with the team that we're a bit like air traffic controllers with lots of planes in the air, all of which are poised to come in for a landing, and it's just a wonderful thing to see so much activity in the portfolio. If you turn to slide 12, I'll say just to spend a moment on YPF. There's really not that much to say. It's the motions for summary judgment have been fully briefed since June of last year, and we're just waiting.
That's not uncommon in litigation, that a judge will take some time to write a definitive merits opinion, we'll see what comes of it. There's not really much more we can say other than that it's there and fully briefed and ready. With that, I will turn it back to Jordan Licht on slide 13 to talk about this great origination machine, where we get the capital from. We have different pools of capital for different risk-reward profile deals. Jordan Licht?
Thanks, John. We talked about putting money to work on the balance sheet, but we also, as John just mentioned, have a great asset management business. On page 13, I want to take a minute to talk about the value we see in that platform. We think about the asset management business as benefiting us in two ways. Number one, we view it as giving us the ability to engage in a broader range of legal finance activity. Number two, it provides leverage to the balance sheet, enabling the balance sheet to be more diversified and for us to be able to execute on larger transactions.
In 2022, we closed on the $360 million Burford Advantage Fund, our first fund that invests in lower risk legal finance assets. On Base two, our latest post-settlement fund, as the investment period for Base one ended during 2022. We believe we're the largest asset manager in the legal finance space by a considerable margin. We saw meaningful growth in our asset management income to $36 million for 2022, primarily driven by the growth in income from BOFC, as that portfolio of core litigation finance assets season. Speaking of BOFC, during 2022, we extended the investment period of that fund to the end of 2023, and we shifted the allocation of each new matter that meets the relevant investment criteria between the balance sheet and BOFC.
75% of those assets now go to the balance sheet, up from the previous 50%. While the timing of earning our asset management income can be variable due to the structure of our engagements, we're very excited about the potential earnings from this platform. Keep in mind, on the slide that I had shown earlier, that the $500 million in implied performance fees from our probabilistic model, don't also include the income from Advantage Fund or post-settlement funds. Let's move on to slide 14. Our liquidity position consisting of cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities at year-end was $210 million. You know, cash receipts of $328 million in 2022 was up 17% from 2021, reflecting the pickup in realizations. We expect to see meaningful cash inflows to occur as case resolutions continue to accelerate.
As always, we balance maintaining our liquidity cushion due to the variability of our cash inflows with seeking to minimize the drag of low returning cash on our overall return on tangible equity. I'd also highlight that we have $115 million at year-end of receivables, the majority of which we expect to convert to cash in 2023. We begin 2023 well positioned to continue to deploy capital against new opportunities. As Chris mentioned, we've had some significant early wins in the first quarter that, if paid in full, would meaningfully contribute to our current liquidity position. With that, I'll turn it back to Chris for some concluding remarks.
Thanks very much, Jordan and John. Just turning to slide 15 and wrapping this up before we take your questions. Again, we sort of begin where we end where we began. We're very pleased with what happened in 2022. The world came back to life. We saw, you know, meaningful upticks in virtually every metric across the business, ranging from realizations in the door to the new business out the door. We ended the year with a very strong cash and liquidity position, which is only continuing to be augmented during 2023 as matters continue to come to fruition. We've got a lot of optimism about what's happening in 2023.
Just the sheer fact that after, you know, being closed and delayed during the pandemic, courts took a while to shake that off, they have shaken it off now. Every court that we're aware of is operating at full capacity and is doing its best to work its way through its backlogs. We're seeing the benefit of that, both tangibly in the examples that we've already given you about good things that have happened during the early part of the year, and just in terms of what the court calendar looks like as the rest of the year goes forward. We're pretty pleased about where the business is after having to endure, you know, a little bit of sleepy time during the pandemic.
As I said at the outset, while inconvenienced and slightly aggravating, on a process basis, you know, I'm pretty excited about the ability not to talk to you any longer going forward about fair value accounting, and to have, you know, to have a pretty clear standard for us and for the industry going forward. With that, we'll stop talking at you, and we'd be delighted to take your questions.
Thank you. We will now start the question and answer session. The first question we have from the phone lines comes from Vikram Kumar of Kuvari Partners. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi there. Thank you guys for your time. just to talk about the accounting audit restatement. Could you just talk me through what triggered the need for this? given that we're now in March and you're talking about, I think you said 45-60 days, and you mentioned in the statement that there's a SEC deadline that could be extended, but there's also an April deadline that if you have not met your release, your audit statement for 2022, that you could be in default of some of your financing. Could you explain both the background for why this change is happening and the implications if we're unable to get it done, the audit done by then, please? I've got a follow-up as well, please.
Yeah, sure. First of all, as to the timing issues, I think they're not of any immediate concern at all. As we said, you know, we think we need another 45-60 days. The various dates that are in the release are fairly formalistic dates. In other words, the bonds require the delivery of financial statements, as you can imagine, just as the SEC does. They're tied together in their timing. Nothing actually happens if you don't meet those dates, and there's a quite a long period thereafter where nothing happens.
For example, the bonds run for a couple of months with no impact whatsoever. to the end of June, and even once you get past that point, there has to be some precipitant action taken. given that this isn't a credit issue, you know, that doesn't seem very likely to me, even if we were to get that far, which I don't think that we will. I'm not concerned about those issues at the moment. on the substance of what's going on here, you know, I don't know that I have a lot to add to what I said before.
You know, this has been an issue of first impression for us, basically for our entire existence, because there isn't a defined, you know, concept of exactly how you apply fair value accounting to these kinds of assets. As we've been engaged in the journey to, you know, a full US listing and full compliance with US GAAP and Sarbanes-Oxley, you know, that's a process by, you know, during which the SEC is looking at the asset class and the financials. We're the very first legal finance firm to list in the United States. This is the first time the SEC has had to look at the asset class. Frankly, quite helpfully, they have been working with us to come to a conclusion about what the best way to express US GAAP in terms of legal finance fair value is.
Right. You say in the statement that they could lead to restatements of previous restatements. Well, obviously, it's been delayed for 22. At this stage, you're unable to say what the quantum of that could be, right? There's obviously quite a big change in methodology that's gonna be required at this stage. I presume it's a downward provision, but we haven't got any indication of that.
No, I don't think that's a reasonable assumption to make, on either front, actually.
Okay.
I don't think any of those things are reasonable assumptions. First of all, I don't think that we're at the stage of knowing whether there would be a restatement or not. I think the paragraph in the release that you're talking about are a series of lawyer-drafted risk factors that appear in this kind of release. Second, I don't think there's any basis for believing that there's going to be a significant change. There may be, but I don't think there's any basis for believing that. What is clear is that our historical approach to relying principally on case developments for fair value is gonna continue to be the principal driver of valuation changes.
That makes sense because those are, you know, just as you think logically about litigation cases, that's what would cause you to change the price you'd be willing to pay for one of our assets. When a court looks at the asset and says, "Hey, this is a good, strong asset," or, "Gee, this is a weak asset." I also don't think there's any basis to speculate that these would be lower rather than higher changes. You know, as I said, what you're really seeing is an inversion in the approach to valuation and the application of some time value of money. That actually probably implies a degree of accretion of income over time that we haven't been doing previously.
It would not be surprising to me, although it's too early to say, it would not be surprising to me to see both an increase in asset value and also a somewhat, a forward-looking increase in income from the approach.
The very last question, and I'll go back to the queue, partly links this. I'm on my mobile phone, excuse me, I can't look, but speak to you and also look at the statement. As you said it just now in your intro, or your colleague did, the cash balance went down. Obviously, you funded the, I think, the new 2030 notes. If you have got delays on the audit, and/or these restatements, are you able to access new sources of financing?
Because the underlying cash in terms of deployment and commitments against what you've actually been able to raise at the moment, and I know there's been a COVID impact, has been significantly below what you've been able to raise from realization, and you've therefore had external sources, be it funds or be it in your own capital raising. Would there be delays to ability to access such the capital markets in the event of certain delays in this audit and/or the restatements? Does that mean that you may have alternative needs for funding your commitments in the coming six to 12 months? Thanks.
We're very happy with the state of our liquidity. You know, as you know, the current liquidity level that we've had, that we have is higher than the level that we've maintained at some points during the past. You know, as Jordan said, this is all about a degree of balance, right? The cash, the undeployed cash that is sitting there on our balance sheet is expensive for us. We want only a moderate amount of capital sitting there because there's cash drag associated with that cash. At the same time, we want enough cash that we're not caught short. You know, it's in our ability to figure out, you know, which attractive opportunities we're gonna take and which we don't.
All of that being said, we have, you know, what you saw right now is a pretty spectacular level of new activity in the portfolio that is cash generative. You know, we've already brought in meaningful cash this year, and it is, you know, if past practice is any indication, some meaningful number of the cases that are headed for trial this year will settle before they get there, which will produce incremental cash. I actually think, you know, the question is not likely to be a liquidity shortfall. It's likely to be a question of what we do with the cash.
Thank you.
Thank you. We now have Justin Bates of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead when you're ready.
Hi, thanks. Again, I'm on my mobile, so apologies if this is in the statement, I recall you mentioning some of the realizations for the first quarter of this year. Do you give any detail on the level of Burford-only deployments in the first three months? As a follow-up, just the point about fair valuing the assets. There's a sentence in the statement that references material weakness in our internal controls. It just jumped out at me, I wondered if you could perhaps touch on what you're trying to convey there relative to the commentary around asset values. Thank you.
Sure. On the first question, no is the answer. Although, as you know, Justin, we are about to embrace, if that's the right word, the joys of quarterly reporting. We will be engaging in quarterly reporting in 2023, and so you won't have to wait too long for that information. The material weakness language that you're talking about is, again, as I was saying to Vikram, is part of the, you know, what I'll call the boilerplate risk factors that were at the back end of the statement.
Just for, especially for the benefit of English listeners who don't, who don't every day live in the U.S. markets, this is a Sarbanes-Oxley concept, which basically says, you know, almost axiomatically, if you change your numbers, then by definition, because you know, GAAP is supposed to be inscribed on tablets in the sky, that you should be able to go and consult, that if you change your numbers, by definition, your original approach had some weakness associated with it. It is just in that context that that language exists. There is not any other context in the business where we believe we have, or we've been told by our auditors that they believe we have any sort of material weakness in our financial reporting.
Okay, that's understood and very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We now have Portia Patel with Canaccord Genuity.
Hi there. Thank you for taking my question. I've just got two, please. First, just to go back to the timing of this. Certainly my understanding was that when Burford listed on the NYSE, the financials were subject to close scrutiny by the SEC at that time. I just wonder if you could provide some more color on what has changed and what has triggered the current investigation, please. That's the first one. The second one, I just wanted to clarify, please, the senior notes which risk covenant breach. Are these, do these include the $180 million due 2025, the $400 million due 2028, and the $360 million due 2030, or a subset of those? Thank you.
Well, in reverse order, I don't believe that they do risk covenant breach. What you again are referring to are a series of anodyne risk factors that are in the release. Just to reiterate what I told Vikram, just as we are required as an SEC registrant to provide financial statements by April 30th, so too we are required under certain of our indentures, and maybe Jordan will be able to tell us in a minute which indentures, I'm not sure that it really matters actually for this purpose. We're, you know, at the same deadline.
In both cases, both as to the SEC and as to the bonds, nothing happens if you go past that April 30th date without providing audited financial statements, except that you enter into a period where you're supposed to go ahead and fix the fact that you haven't done that. With the bonds, you have, at the very least, two more months to fix that period, to fix that issue, and likely more time after that. With the SEC, you have even more time. I'm not, as I sit here today, concerned about those issues. To your first question, this is not an investigation. This is a regular way dialogue between the SEC staff and Burford about the best way to apply US GAAP to our particular asset class.
While you're right that the SEC did review our financial statements when we first listed in the U.S., that, you know, we listed when we were still reporting under IFRS. Subsequent to listing, we converted to U.S. GAAP, and it's really the first year of our U.S. GAAP financials that has stimulated this conversation that we're having about what U.S. GAAP should do with respect to legal finance assets, which is an issue of first impression in the United States.
Thank you.
Thank you. We now have Matthew Howlett of B. Riley. You may proceed with your question.
predicting my question. Just going back to sort of, you know, this normalization in the courts. When you think about the weighted average life, you know, Chris, from the portfolio line form, it's been extending obviously since 2018. I mean, what are you speaking now about sort of a normalization going back to sorta, you know, where things were pre 2018, two years, two and a half years? Just sort of a sense you can give us what normal is?
John, do you wanna take your hand at that?
Well, I guess there's two ways. The piece that we're talking about here is just looking at what is already in the portfolio, whether its life is shorter or longer than our averages, that is poised to reach a conclusion going forward because the delays have lifted. Some of them may be older matters that got held up that would have resolved, but they were scheduled for trial, the trial got put off, or the trial couldn't get scheduled. Some of the matters were filed more recently, and the courts have just gotten right back on track, and they're being slotted in and moving forward just as fast as they would have pre-COVID.
I don't know that the point we were making was one about, you can expect our average life of investment to be different from what it has been. I think it was more an observation about when I'm looking at what's in the portfolio today that's headed toward resolution, it's a large chunk of stuff. That being said, I do think, now that I think about your question, which is a good one, I do think it is heartening to see, not only that there are courts where there was clearly a backlog and things were delayed, and they've made their way through the delays and therefore were getting to trial on things or where things are settling instead of going to trial with the threat of trial, looming.
I think we are seeing some matters where the courts are sufficiently cleared of their backlog that in fact, they're moving through the process just as rapidly as they would have before COVID started. I don't wanna answer your question on what our average delay or, you know, what our average life is or duration is on the fly, but it's a good question to go back to the quants and look at the statistics and see for the recent vintages how they've moved, because my perception is, just, based on observation about data, is that things are returning to normalcy from filing time to conclusion time.
On the last call, I think you mentioned that, you know, there's a difference between geographies, New York versus Tallahassee. What you're saying is, in New York the backlogs are clearing up and looking more like the Tallahassee's load. Did I hear you correctly?
Well, I mean, I wouldn't classify those two jurisdictions in particular, but I think it's right. It also, it frankly, I have to say, varies judge to judge, even within a locale. There are some judges that just have moved their dockets more quickly. All judges have to deal, in the federal courts at least, with criminal trials as well. They have to slot them in because there's a speedy trial requirement. I think that's probably fair rather than it. It could be a geographic thing, it could be case type, it could be judge by judge. There's some judges that are further ahead in clearing the backlog such that they're basically just back on schedule.
There are other judges who are still clearing it, but because they're clearing it, there's a heck of a lot going on before them. Even if you were to file a new case in their court, it might go slightly slower than it would in the place that's been caught up already. I think that's fair.
As to the Tallahassee point, that was me. What I was doing was I was contrasting the length of time in the court statistics, in the public court statistics that it takes to get to trial. That number is very much lower in Northern Florida than it is in New York. Part of that is probably that Northern Florida has cleared its backlog, so it's right back to normal. The simple reality of life is that New York is always gonna be slower than the Northern District of Florida, even without the overlay of COVID. There are just more cases in New York. As John said, there are more criminal cases. It's just a more complex litigation market and environment.
Even on the best day, it's going to take longer to get a case done in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles than it is in a number of other cities in the United States.
So
Gotcha. No, I appreciate
With that, I think we've
Sure. With that, I think we've taken enough of your time on short notice for those of you in New York and especially, well into your night for those of you who joined us from the UK. Thank you all very much. This call will go up on the website so people can listen to it tomorrow. There is another call tomorrow where we're happy to take more questions. In the interim, thank you so much for participating and for your continued support of an interest in Burford.
Thanks.