Appealing Appraisal Actions: New Judgments From The Cayman Courts

 A well-known and now widely used part of local legislation, Section 238(8) of the Cayman Islands Companies Law (the "Companies Law"), entitles a shareholder who dissents from a merger or consolidation of a Cayman company under the statutory merger provisions contained in Part XVI of the Companies Law to be paid "the fair value of his shares". Disputes about how to determine "fair value", both in terms of procedure and calculation methodology, have been voluminous over the past eighteen months or so, and have resulted in a sharp increase in the number of fair value appraisal actions before the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands (the "Grand Court").

Flowing from that litigation, and adding to the growing jurisprudence on this front, the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal (the "CICA") has recently released a number of highly anticipated decisions concerning various interlocutory issues arising in the course of litigation of this nature. The most important of the judgments