Friday reading for the rest of the week.

Funders, PACCAR and the Regulatory Reset

Litigation funders price risk against a cost base — and AI is compressing that cost base in real time. What happens to funding models, ATE premiums and costs budgets when the hours a case was budgeted to take are no longer the hours it takes? Closing Series 1, this piece follows the AI dividend into the funded-litigation market, where the question of who captures the saving is at its sharpest.

Mercedes-Benz closed 2025 on €32.2 billion of net industrial liquidity and borrows at investment-grade rates. The claimant ecosystem that just lost to it pays 10% to 30%-plus for capital — sometimes far more. That asymmetry doesn't decide legal questions; it decides how long each side can afford to fight. From Pan-NOx to the FCA's £7.5 billion motor finance redress scheme, via the collapse of a £250 million funder, this is the arithmetic behind the war of attrition.