City law firm Rosenblatt has raised a war chest of £5-7m to pursue litigation cases in todays flotation on the London stock exchange, the largest ever by a UK law firm.
The firm, which was admitted to trading this morning, said that £5-7m of the £31.8m raised would be put towards funding litigation cases and used as working capital.
Rosenblatt has previously worked with external litigation funders such as Doorway Capital, which typically provide funds to firms in exchange for a share of any settlement received.
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The firm said it will also allocate £5-7m for acquisitions of complementary businesses and investment in IT and artificial intelligence systems.
The majority of the money raised will go towards the acquisition of the firm with £18m going towards the repayment of loans owed by the sellers and around £2m towards the repayment of tax liabilities.
The float marks a windfall for senior partner Ian Rosenblatt who prior to admission owned 59 per cent of the business and now owns 21 per cent of the firm.
Milton Asset Management, Fidelity Investments, Blackrock and Canaccord Genuity Group have acquired 15.8 per cent, 6.6 per cent and 3.6 per cent of the law firm's shares.
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Chief executive Nicola Foulston said: “Our admission to AIM will provide us with a significant opportunity to create a profitable and growing business to capitalise on the changes seen in the legal marketplace in the UK in recent years driven by regulatory reform and new technology. We want to use the funds raised to take advantage of what is a highly fragmented market to engage in consolidation as well as fund more litigation 'in-house'.”
The fundraising, which was oversubscribed, raised approximately £43m before expenses, through the issue of 36,842,106 new ordinary shares and 43,250,000 existing ordinary shares at a placing price of 95p giving the firm a market capitalisation of approximately £76m.
Rosenblatt's share price spiked to a high of 111p shortly after the market opened, but were trading at 106p at the time of writing.
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Cenoks Securities acted as nominated adviser and broker, law firm DLA Piper advised the company and law firm Fieldfisher advised Cenkos.
Rosenblatts flotation is the largest ever by a UK law firm and just the fourth since Gateley took advantage of a change in legislation in 2015 that allowed law firms to take on external capital and non-lawyer owners for the first time.
