The Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, presented a keynote address to Butterworths’ Financial Institutions Litigation Conference (23 October 2009) titled ‘A judicial perspective on the conduct of claims in the current climate’. This speech highlighted the severe injustice felt by many as a consequence of the global financial crisis. He argued that in the United Kingdom, thanks to government intervention, we have not seen the collapse of banks, while other countries (including the USA) have. He pointed out that homeowners, people with savings in various banks, those who have saved for pensions, individual shareholders, institutional investors, small, medium and large businesses, employers and employees have all suffered. Perhaps no sector of society has not been affected, or will not in some way be affected, by the credit crunch and its aftermath.
He cited as an example a recent headline in the Financial Times: ‘3,700 investors to pursue Lehman claim’. He further cited how Burford Capital had announced that it had set up an £80 million fund to underwrite the costs of legal proceedings to be brought by those who have lost money as a consequence of financial institutions’ activities, misjudgements, fraud and the like.
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