2018 was an active year for South African appraisal, with new caselaw showing a greater maturity to the (relatively recent) appraisal remedy. We covered some developments before.

African law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (CDH) has written an extensive summary of South African appraisal law – often referred to as Section 164. CDH notes that (like in Delaware) in South Africa, appraisal rights are available for many major corporate acts; that the process for seeking appraisal is technical and formalistic; and that the fair value determination is timed to when the applicable resolution about the corporate action was approved. (We’ve posted before that the ‘when’ regarding fair value is a critical issue.) CDH also notes that Section 164 does not provide a specific mechanism for the fair value determination – something courts in the US have wrestled with as well.