Legal News & Events

The Grand Court of the Cayman Islands has delivered three decisions concerning the statutory merger regime under section 238 of the Companies Law, which is typically triggered by the taking private of a publically listed Cayman Islands company. S.238 requires the Court to determine the “fair value” of shares compulsorily purchased from a shareholder who dissents from the merger. All three cases involved the same investors as dissenting shareholders.

New legislation has been enacted in the Cayman Islands to require Cayman Islands' companies (including LLCs) to implement beneficial ownership registers (the "BOR Registers") and requiring the Minister charged with responsibility for Financial Services, or a person designated by him (the "Competent Authority") to establish a search platform enabling the information contained in the BOR Registers to be searched (the “Platform”). The date of implementation is yet to be appointed by Cabinet but is expected to be on or around 26 June 2017 to coincide with the Fourth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive which also requires centralised beneficial ownership registers to be implemented by EU member states.

In a January 2017 judgment, the Cayman Islands Grand Court has concluded that a Cayman company may apply for the appointment of restructuring provisional liquidators where a creditor’s winding up petition has been filed in respect of the company, even if the company could not have filed a winding up petition itself. This adds to the ongoing debate on restructuring provisional liquidations in the Cayman Islands as highlighted in the conflicting decisions of China Shanshui and China Milk.