Maples generates business under new law

(CNS): Following the passage of amendments to legislation relating to the offshore sector earlier this year Maples and Calder said recently that the new law had facilitated two major transactions structured to take advantage of the new opportunities to effect mergers involving Cayman Islands companies. The law firm said the mergers were the first of a kind facilitated by the new merger and consolidation regime in May 2009. In the first transaction, Maples and Calder acted for a Cayman Islands company in its acquisition by a California entity., in the second transaction it assisted on the completion of the first merger of two regulated insurance companies.

Maples explained that the California entity formed a Cayman Islands merger subsidiary and the target company was merged into it, the first time that such a structure has been used in the Cayman Islands.  This ground-breaking transaction demonstrated a significant potential use of the new Cayman Islands merger legislation.

With the insurance firms Maples advised a major US financial institution on the merger of a Vermont regulated insurance company into a Cayman Islands licensed captive insurer. A number of other US licensed insurers had merged into the Vermont captive immediately prior to its merger into the Cayman Islands company, resulting in a straightforward consolidation of a substantial pool of businesses into a single Cayman Islands company.  As the Cayman Islands company holds an insurance licence, the prior approval of the Cayman Island Monetary Authority had to be obtained.