Oct 10 (Reuters) - A federal judicial rules-making panel

on Thursday agreed to study whether a nationwide rule requiring

disclosure of third-party litigation funding in lawsuits is

necessary at the urging of major companies, business groups and

Republican lawmakers.

After a decade of weighing whether it should do anything to

regulate the emerging field of litigation finance, the U.S.

Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Civil Rules at a

meeting in Washington, D.C., agreed to create a subcommittee to

examine the issue.

"I agree it is an important issue, and I agree it's an issue

that is not going away," said U.S. District Judge Robin

Rosenberg, a Florida-based judge who chairs the committee.

The decision came a week after more than 100 major companies

from the technology, pharmaceutical, automotive and other

sectors signed a letter urging the judiciary to take action and

require greater transparency into who is funding the cases being

filed against them.

A few federal judges or courts, such as New Jersey's,

already require disclosure of litigation funding, where a

financier backs clients' cases in exchange for a cut of an

eventual settlement or judgment, but there is no uniformity

across the judiciary.

The companies that joined that letter included Amazon.com ( AMZN ),

Google, Cisco ( CSCO ), Meta, Comcast ( CMCSA ), Exxon, Bayer, Ford, Pfizer ( PFE ) and

Novartis. Several Republican lawmakers including Senators John

Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had recently

also written letters urging the judiciary to take action.

The creation of a subcommittee, which will be chaired by

Chief U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor of the Northern

District of Alabama, does not guarantee a rule will be issued in

what is likely to be a years-long process.

But committee members said it was finally time they took a

closer look at an issue that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had

first urged it take action on back in 2014, citing growth in the

sector and the need to know if any problems are emerging.

Companies that finance U.S. commercial lawsuits in exchange

for a cut of any recoveries committed $2.7 billion to new deals

last year, according to a recent report.

"We know what the theoretical problem is," said U.S.

District Judge John Bates, who chairs the judiciary's top

rule-making panel, the Committee on Rules of Practice and

Procedure. "I think we have to look if there are actual

problems."

Rosenberg said the subcommittee would seek input from

lawyers, litigation funding industry participants, and others.

Page Faulk, senior vice president of legal reform

initiatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal

Reform, in a statement welcomed the committee's decision.

"We urge the federal judiciary to move forward swiftly in

adopting mandatory disclosure requirements to get a peek behind

the curtain of the implications that this secretive,

multi-billion-dollar global industry has on our civil justice

system," Faulk said.

Business groups have argued that disclosures about financial

backers in cases are necessary to allow defendants to make

informed decisions about the course of litigation and understand

who is making decisions about whether to settle lawsuits.

The International Legal Finance Association, a trade group

representing the commercial funding industry, has argued that

such a nationwide requirement is unnecessary and that it should

be left to individual courts to determine the relevancy of any

financing agreement to the merits of any particular case.

Read more:

Louisiana law places new rules on litigation funders

Litigation funder Burford fights order denying bid to take

over Sysco ( SYY ) cases

US litigation funding in 'state of flux' as deal commitments

dip, says report

Litigation funders deployed $3.2 bln in U.S. investments

last year - report

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)