In a comprehensive ruling handed down last week, the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands confirmed that minority shareholders of companies that undertake a ‘short-form’ merger are entitled to dissent from the merger and to be paid fair value for their shares, as determined by the Grand Court. The ruling, delivered in Changyou.com Limited,
Cayman Appraisal Rights
Will a Wave of US Delistings Mean a Wave of Cayman Appraisal?
It looks likely – per this blog post from Deminor Recovery Services. With numerous US-listed People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) companies facing threats to their listings, the attractiveness of withdrawing from the US market may become stronger. Take privates, mergers, and other arrangements resulting in the delisting of the PRC company from the US exchange…

Cayman Court Addresses Dissenter and Respondent Discovery in Appraisal Actions
Cayman firm Collas Crill has posted this informative analysis of a recent Cayman Grand Court (the first instance court in the Cayman Islands) decision involving questions of discovery and procedure in Cayman appraisal (sometimes known as “fair value” proceedings or dissenters’ rights proceedings). Per Collas Crill, the Grand Court refused to reinvent the wheel when…

Guest Post: Appraising Section 238 “fair value” Proceedings in the Cayman Islands: An Overview
Section 238 of the Companies Law (2020 Revision) (“section 238“) provides an avenue through which shareholders of a merged or consolidated Cayman Islands company can apply to have the “fair value” of their shares determined by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands (the “Court“).
Development
Section 238 has its origins…

Valuation in the Cayman Islands
We’ve posted before about Cayman Appraisal actions. The Cayman Islands remain an active jurisdiction for appraisal actions; and with appraisal actions comes valuation questions. Cayman firm Collas Crill has issued an explanatory note on valuation methods in the Cayman Islands, discussing the discounted cash flow (DCF) and market-based approaches taken by Cayman courts. As others…

Cayman Islands Review Covers Appraisal
In the 12th Edition of the Mergers and Acquisitions Review, the entry regarding the Caymans Islands includes discussion of the Cayman appraisal regime and confirms what other commentators have observed: Cayman Islands appraisal is in flux as the result of appeals of some of the first major appraisal decisions in that jurisdiction. Like in…

Cayman Appraisal–An Update From the Islands
Loeb Smith, a law firm with a Cayman office, provides this update on dissenters’ rights in the Cayman Islands, focusing on recent developments in interim payments. In reviewing the landscape of investor strategies regarding Cayman mergers, Loeb Smith also notes–as we have written about previously–“Information can also be disclosed during court proceedings for…

Cayman Quasi-Appraisal: It Exists, but You’ll Probably Never See It
Appraisal is a creature of statute, including in the Cayman Islands. Cayman appraisal has become a notable topic recently, with major decisions coming down from the Cayman courts and an uptick in investors using the appraisal remedy. Similarly, authors writing about Delaware have noted that quasi-appraisal is getting traction. Do the two have…

Cayman Appraisal Win Spurs Securities Fraud Class Action
It’s a general truism that appraisal only directly benefits those who dissent and seek fair value for their shares. But appraisal can also spur further litigation – especially when the result of the appraisal decision is a 100% premium over merger price. Such is the case with Shanda Games Limited. While our friends in Cayman…

Cayman Appraisal: More Coverage of Appraisal Proceedings
Conyers Dill, a Cayman firm, has this new article out about Cayman appraisal, including the recent Trina Solar case. This article discusses appraisal appeals, payments to dissenting shareholders, and discovery of dissenters. Notable to US practitioners is that the scope of the discovery of dissenters/petitioners and even whether dissenters/petitioners should be required to…