Ashford W. Meikle, Staff Reporter
The Dyoll Building in New Kingston.
THE LIQUIDATOR of Dyoll's Caymanian operations, RSM Cayman Islands, says that the decision by the Supreme Court of Jamaica to wind up the company will not have an effect on its planned liquidation in the Cayman islands.
"The ... decision does not have any impact [on] the appointment of the joint provisional liquidators in the Cayman Islands," said RSM Cayman in a press release.
Last Friday, the Supreme Cour gave the Financial Services Commission (FSC) the go-ahead to wind up the operations of Dyoll Insurance Company, a month after the FSC submitted its application to the Court.
The FSC assumed temporary control of Dyoll on March 7 this year, almost a month after the Jamaica Stock Exchange suspended trading in the group's shares. The regulatory agency appointed Kenneth Tomlinson to do an audit of the insurance company and within weeks of its take-over, the FSC sold Dyoll's Jamaican insurance portfolio to a GraceKennedy subsidiary, Jamaica International Insurance Company.
APPOINTMENT
In a swift move in April this year, the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands appointed Kenneth Krys and Christopher Stride as joint provisional liquidators of Dyoll Cayman. The Caymanian liquidators said that they intended to be aggressive in representing Caymanian interests once the liquidation proceedings had started in Jamaica. "A plan will be developed to contact creditors of the company in the Cayman Islands to ensure their wishes are heard and vote recorded regarding the appointment of a liquidator in Jamaica," RSM Cayman elaborated in the press release.
The Caymanian liquidator asserted that it would recommend that there be "a joint appointment over the company in Jamaica, with insolvency practitioners representing both Jamaica and the Cayman Islands conducting the liquidation."
The Financial Services Commission projected that Dyoll had a deficit of about $1.1 billion caused by a surfeit of claims corollary to Hurricane Ivan.
Court documents indicate that as at April 20 this year, Dyoll Insurance Company had total assets of almost $584 million and liabilities of over $2.1 billion both in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. In fact, the petition by FSC to the Supreme Court acknowledged that "The company is clearly unable to pay its debts and its assets are greatly exceeded by its debts."
