United Kingdom News

Great Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is investigating several possible U.K. Bribery Act violations, with at least one preliminary probe likely to develop soon into a full-fledged investigation, outgoing SFO Director Richard Alderman told Just Anti-Corruption.

Burford reported its profits surged to $15.9 million last year from $1.9 million in 2010, as the U.K. litigation-finance firm harvested millions of dollars from settlements negotiated by clients who turned to it for cash to maintain lawsuits they otherwise might have been forced to drop. Successful cases included one that settled for a $1.4 million profit a week after Burford invested in the litigation.

The first known brand-share between a barristers’ chambers and a solicitors’ firm in the UK will begin operating on Monday, offering clients legal services on a fixed-price contract rather than charging by the hour or on a project basis.

Almost a third of the UK's top 40 law firms are looking at joining forces with a nonlegal practice in the next two years because of deregulation in the legal market, a study has found.

Government ministers have had to get used to an unusually truculent House of Lords in the last few weeks, as I wrote about last week.

A new study shows that the market for litigation funding, otherwise known as third party funding, is firmly established for commercial disputes in the UK.

The head of the U.K. Serious Fraud Office warned foreign companies that the fraud enforcement agency is actively pursuing them for violations of a new anti-corruption law, during a speech in Hong Kong on Monday.

Royal Dutch Shell should pay an initial $1 billion to help clean areas affected by a string of oil spills in Niger Delta, human rights groups said.

With case law on the the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in its infancy, one of the federal judges presiding over the first wave of U.S. foreign bribery cases to go to trial said he and his colleagues share a difficult task.