Jeremy Walton

Jeremy Walton is a partner and the Litigation and Insolvency practice group head in Cayman. He is also global head of the Fund Disputes team that is described by Chambers Global 2011 as “one of the largest teams on the market, with a tremendous amount of experienced people.”

Jeremy specialises in international commercial litigation, including: directors’ and shareholders’ disputes; insolvency work, including the dissolution of commercial joint ventures and the dismantling of corporate structures; asset-tracing and recovery work, often as part of cross-border and multi-jurisdictional litigation; and disputes in relation to both family and commercial trusts.

Since his launch of a dedicated Fund Disputes team in June 2007 (the first of its kind in the offshore market), Jeremy has been involved in the leading Cayman litigation, insolvency and restructuring cases: including Absolute Capital Management, Basis Yield Alpha Fund, Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Funds, CPIM Structured Credit Funds, DB Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund, Laurus Offshore Fund, Lancelot Investors Fund, Palm Beach Offshore Fund, Peloton ABS Fund, RAB Capital Ritchie Capital, Rye Select funds, Wextrust Capital. He has significant experience in representing the full range of parties involved in fund-related matters: including liquidators, directors, investment managers, auditors, shareholders and creditors.

Jeremy has been consistently highly-ranked in various international legal publications, including Chambers Global (since 2004) and PLC Which Lawyer (since 2006) and is named as a leading Insolvency and Restructuring lawyer in The International Who's Who Legal. Clients and legal practitioners interviewed in the 2009 edition of Chambers Global described him as “the star of the show - persuasive, attentive and thoughtful”. Clients also lauded his “terrific knowledge of Cayman law and first-rate written work”. The 2010 edition of Chambers Global stated "Jeremy Walton has a very high profile, with peers emphasising his quality and reputation" and the most recent edition described him as “a very bright litigator”. The 2012 edition of the Legal 500 Caribbean rankings: Dispute Resolution publication described Jeremy as being “respected by very experienced clients”. He was also recognised recently in the 2011 PLC Which Lawyer? rankings in the areas of dispute resolution, and restructuring and insolvency. Jeremy is the winner of the 2012 ILO Client Choice Award for Litigation in the Cayman Islands.

Originally called to the Bar of England and Wales, Jeremy became an Attorney-at-Law in the Cayman Islands in 1997. He joined the Group in 1998 and has been a partner since 2004.

Jeremy regularly speaks at conferences and writes for a range of publications (including The Lawyer, Mondaq, International Law Office, The Hedge Fund Journal, and Hedge Funds Review). He also authors PLC’s annual Cross-Border Handbook on Dispute Resolution, and Global Arbitration Review’s annual Getting the Deal Through – Arbitration.

Jeremy is a member of the Cayman Islands Law Society, the International Bar Association, the Bar of England and Wales, the Chancery Bar Association (overseas member), and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (Chairman of the Cayman Chapter). Jeremy is also an accredited mediator and a member of the Civil Mediation Council.

Jeremy is an experienced advocate, with a large number of reported cases in the Grand Court, the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council in London. He has conducted litigation of considerable commercial and financial significance for an array of international clients. Aside from the Fund Disputes team cases cited above, recent examples of his commercial dispute work include:

• Acting for Maan Al-Sanea in a very high profile multi-billion dollar fraud claim, involving 43 defendants and the coordination of related or ancillary litigation in five jurisdictions. This involves a cross-office Appleby team from the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Jersey. It is currently the largest piece of litigation in the Grand Court (Financial Services Division) of the Cayman Islands
• Coordinating litigation on behalf of Elliott Associates in multiple offshore jurisdictions to obtain and enforce judgments on hundreds of millions of dollars of defaulted sovereign debt
• Acting for the Turkish Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) in successful banking fraud proceedings against Murat Demirel, arising out of the collapse of two prominent Turkish banks
• Representing Prince Jefri Bolkiah in high-profile litigation with the Sultan of Brunei to recover assets arising out of alleged misappropriation of US$15 billion from the Brunei Investment Agency
• Acting for Grant Thornton International in litigation arising out of the collapse of the Parmalat group
• Representing the Indonesian state-owned energy company (PT Pertamina) in a US$316 million fraud claim arising out of a JV project to develop and operate a geothermal power plant in Java
• Representing insurers in litigation and arbitration over contested insurance claims totalling more than US$150m arising out of Hurricane Ivan
• Representing a mutual fund manager in a dispute with Morgan Stanley over the acquisition of shares in bank debt portfolios in the People's Republic of China, involving multi-party litigation in both Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands.

• Arbitration & Mediation
• Asset Tracing
• Banking Litigation
• Fraud Litigation
• Negligence Claims

University of Oxford (England)