Aperture Investors, an alternative asset manager and part of Generali Investments, expanded its litigation finance private credit platform, bringing the platform to more than $600 million in assets and approximately $1 billion in total investment capacity.
The new strategy will provide additional opportunities and capacity to Aperture’s existing litigation finance platform, which seeks to provide structured loans primarily to law firms, collateralized by expected legal fee receivables from post-settlement, procedurally mature, near-settlement and short-duration legal cases.
Led by Luke Darkow, portfolio manager, litigation finance, the expanded platform is designed to target uncorrelated, income-oriented returns through an institutional private credit approach to what Aperture believes is an emerging and historically underbanked asset class. Darkow has over 13 years of investing experience focused on sourcing, analyzing, structuring and managing litigation finance private credit investments.
Under Darkow’s leadership, the litigation finance team has deployed capital across structured term loan facilities secured primarily by post-settlement and near-settlement legal fee receivables, while maintaining a disciplined focus on collateral quality, borrower diversification and downside protection.
“Plaintiffs law firms’ ability to access traditional debt and equity financing solutions remains relatively constrained, while investors are looking for sources of return that are less dependent on traditional market cycles,” Darkow said. “We believe litigation finance sits at the intersection of those two trends, and the launch of this strategy will allow us to provide investors with more flexible, ongoing access to this opportunity set. Our focus is narrow by design, which is why we primarily intend to lend against short-duration and procedurally mature cases where we can better evaluate and mitigate risk.”
