Litigation finance firm Parabellum Capital has made three hires in an effort to expand into a growing market.
Parabellum has hired Dai Wai Chin Feman as its director of commercial litigation strategies, Sean Thompson as director of intellectual property strategies, and Angela Ni as director of underwriting.
According to the firm’s co-founder and chief executive officer Howard Shams, he brought on the three professionals to keep up with increasing demand for litigation finance services.
“We’re growing because the industry itself is growing,” Shams said by phone Monday. “We’re well known in the industry. We’re finding more and more opportunities to express our investment thesis. The hires were made to help us respond to that growth.”
The firm isn’t the only one expanding to keep up with demand in this sector. At the beginning of May, the largest litigation finance firm, Burford Capital, likewise built out its team. Curiam Capital, a litigation finance firm based in New York, set up shop just this year, according to Preqin.
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Before joining Parabellum, Chin Feman specialized in commercial and antitrust litigation as a partner at Dorsey & Whitney. Thompson worked as a patent litigator at WilmerHale and as senior litigation counsel at Blackbird Technologies, a patent monetization company. Meanwhile, Ni previously served as a senior intellectual property litigator at Paul Hastings prior to joining the firm.
In addition to bringing on those three, Parabellum has promoted Moshe Schwartz to director of portfolio management.
“The people that we hired are pretty unique,” Shams said. “It’s a diverse group of people with the highest credentials and a lot of integrity.” According to Shams, the built-out team will allow Parabellum to push into claimant litigation finance. Traditionally, litigation financiers work with lawyers and law firms, but this move means the people who hire lawyers can receive financing as well.
“These hires reflect an innovative approach to our sourcing ability,” Shams said, “allowing us to focus on this direct sourcing from claimants.”
He added that institutional investors find the asset class attractive because it’s uncorrelated to the broader market. Given the long and sustained rise in most equities markets, this can be attractive.
Parabellum has also moved its offices from the Financial District in New York City to Midtown.
