On a return trip to the London Stock Exchange a little more than a year after its IPO, Burford has become the best-capitalized fund in the burgeoning litigation financing business. Now it's looking to deploy all that new cash.

After inking a settlement with founders of the Fairfield Greenwich Group over more than $1 billion lost in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at Boies Schiller said the deal "allows us to really focus on the defendants that have a much greater ability to pay."

The litigation over MBIA Inc.'s 2009 restructuring got a tiny bit more manageable on Friday, when Third Avenue and its Milbank lawyers agreed to discontinue fraud and breach of contract claims against the monoline insurer. But MBIA's lawyers at Kasowitz Benson have their hands full defending against similar claims by a consortium of banks, and Third Avenue may just be watching to see how the banks' case plays out.