Cayman deals equal 25% of all offshore merger business
(CNS): Merger and acquisition deals reached a five-year high in the Cayman Islands last year, according to offshore law firm, Appleby, which said business in Cayman accounted for around one third of the deal volume and over a quarter of the deal value for the entire offshore region. The total cumulative value of offshore M&A deals across all offshore jurisdictions in 2015 increased 56% over the previous year, with average deal value topping highs not seen since 2007, lawyers said in their latest edition of Offshore-i.
“For four years now, we have seen the Cayman Islands ranked as the most popular destination for investors seeking to acquire offshore assets,” said Simon Raftopoulos, a Cayman-based partner and member of the firm’s Corporate Finance and Private Equity teams. “With nearly 1,000 deals recorded in 2015, Cayman had another standout year and was a significant contributor to a robust year for transactional activity in the offshore markets by all key metrics—deal value, deal volume and average deal size.”
Cayman attracted 974 deals in 2015, nearly twice the number of the next busiest jurisdiction, the report found. The transactions were worth a cumulative USD125bn, marking a 14% rise in deal value over 2014. Both the number of deals and the average deal size (USD129m) experienced 7% year-on-year growth. Two of the 10 largest transactions of 2015 involved Cayman-incorporated companies as targets.
Cayman was top as well in IPOs, despite a drop in the number that have completed a listing over the last 12 months. Of all the IPOs that completed during 2015, 45 out of 82 concerned the listing of a Cayman-incorporated company.
Category: Finance, Financial Services
