Bio
Tony Heaver-Wren is a senior partner in the Dispute Resolution practice group in Cayman. Before joining Appleby in 2008 Tony practised as a senior associate at leading firms in England and Australia.
Tony heads both the Insolvency and Restructuring and the Merger Disputes teams in Cayman. He has led teams in the most significant Cayman Islands corporate restructurings, appeared frequently as counsel in schemes of arrangement hearings and conducted numerous appraisal claim proceedings on behalf of dissenting shareholders following Chinese take-private statutory mergers. Tony also has extensive Fund Dispute experience, for stakeholders and managers.
Tony’s practice is richly diverse and he intersects frequently with colleagues on complex questions arising in Private Equity, M&A, Banking and Finance, Structured Finance and Fund Finance. His 25 years of experience includes advising major lenders, bondholders, insolvency officeholders, fund managers, investment fund shareholders and boards of private and publicly listed companies in all aspects of corporate governance, directors duties, minority shareholders’ rights, secured and unsecured creditor enforcements.
Tony has acted as an expert witness on numerous occasions, providing evidence of Cayman law to courts in the United States, Hong Kong and Australia. He has been published extensively and is the author of the Cayman chapter of Cross Border Insolvency.
Tony is a robust and strategic advocate for client interests, and has been recognised in Chambers Global 2020 for his “quality insolvency and restructuring work” with clients describing him as “a very approachable guy” with “a very good reputation.” In 2019, Chambers described him as “a strong operator who knows his way around complex disputes’ and a lawyer who “can act very quickly while still doing high quality work.”
Expertise:
Recent matters include:
- Advising on the first ever systemic failure of a subscription finance facility to a Cayman Islands Exempted Limited Partnership.
- Leading the highest value and most complex Cayman Islands merger dispute.
- Advocating for schemes of arrangement and capital reductions to facilitate Asian M&A transactions and South American pipeline asset spin-offs.
- Leading the Dispute Resolution team for the Senior Creditors on the Ocean Rig case, the largest ever Cayman Islands restructuring which obtained US chapter 15 recognition. He also led the team, acting for the company, in the CHC Helicopter restructuring, the Cayman proceedings supporting the US chapter 11.
- Advising on enforcement options and strategic dispute management in a plethora of cases involving Cayman Islands exempted companies, exempted limited partnerships, segregated portfolio companies and limited liability companies.
