A Company 115 Days Old Is Buying Control of Jamaica’s Dolphin Cove

Corporates

The Dolphin Cove takeover has a buyer that did not exist in February, a price nobody will state, and owners nobody has named.

Global Attractions Ltd was incorporated in Saint Lucia on the sixteenth of March. On the ninth of July it signed to buy control of one of Jamaica’s best-known tourism assets.

Our reporting has shown that the seller’s ultimate parent, The Dolphin Company, has been in Chapter 11 in Delaware since March 2025, with a hearing set for July 20. The Jamaican operating company itself was never in bankruptcy and continued trading as an independently listed entity throughout the parent’s insolvency proceedings.

That is a hundred and fifteen days between existing and buying. None of this is improper, and all of it is worth reading carefully.

What the Dolphin Cove takeover involves

World of Dolphins holds just under three hundred and fourteen million ordinary shares, close to eighty percent of the company, and it has agreed to sell every one of them.

Dolphin Cove’s directors were informed by the seller’s attorneys on Friday, and the market was notified at the weekend. The company has 392,426,376 shares in issue and closed Monday at eleven Jamaican dollars, valuing the whole business near four point three billion Jamaican dollars.

On that basis the controlling block is worth roughly three point four billion, and the twenty percent held by minorities about eight hundred and sixty million. The actual price may differ, because control usually carries a premium.

Completion depends on refinancing and discharging the company’s existing credit facility with Sagicor Bank Jamaica.

Why the seller is selling

This is not a Jamaican failure being resolved. It is a Mexican one being paid for with a Jamaican asset.

Leisure Investments Holdings, which trades as The Dolphin Company and is the ultimate parent of World of Dolphins, filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware in March 2025. World of Dolphins had pledged its entire Dolphin Cove stake as collateral for a hundred-million-dollar senior note issued by the group’s Mexican holding company.

Crucially, neither Dolphin Cove nor World of Dolphins was itself in bankruptcy. The Jamaican company kept operating and kept its listing throughout.

So a solvent business with two hundred and forty-five employees is changing hands because of debt raised somewhere else, by someone else. The next Chapter 11 hearing is on the twentieth of July.

Eleven years, and the block is worth less

Compare this to the last change of ownership. In 2015 the Mexican buyer took an initial fifty-eight percent in a transaction reported at three point seven billion Jamaican dollars, paying about thirteen American cents a share and more than thirty-five million dollars for the majority interest.

Today the larger controlling block is worth roughly three point four billion at market, so eleven years on, a bigger stake carries a smaller nominal price tag before inflation is even considered.

The share price explains the rest. The stock fell thirty-five percent during 2025 on the bankruptcy proceedings and is down another sixteen percent this year.

The St Lucia detail that closes the circle

Dolphin Cove has a history in Saint Lucia, and it is not a happy one. The company bought land there in 2012 and later put down a forty percent deposit on a dolphin encounter park that never opened.

In its 2025 accounts it fully wrote down a one point one one million dollar advance made for that St Lucia project. The island was the expansion that failed.

It is now the jurisdiction of the buyer. Whether that is coincidence or design, nobody has said, because nobody has named who owns Global Attractions.

The trading backdrop is bleak but not broken. Full-year 2025 revenue was thirteen point one million dollars with a net loss of two point three million, including a two point eight million impairment on money owed by related companies caught in the parent’s insolvency.

Assets fell eleven percent, partly because the company sold live assets, which in this business means animals. It still generates positive operating cash flow.

Two dates now matter for minority holders. Exchange rules oblige the buyer to make a follow-up offer to all remaining shareholders within thirty days of taking control, and the annual meeting falls on the thirtieth of July, where shareholders vote on three directors and KPMG steps down as auditor with no connection to the sale disclosed.

Who is buying Dolphin Cove?

Global Attractions Ltd, a company incorporated in Saint Lucia on March 16, 2026, less than four months before it signed the purchase agreement. The identity of the individuals behind it has not been made public, and the sale price was not disclosed.

Why is the Dolphin Cove takeover happening at all?

Its majority owner pledged the entire stake as security for a hundred-million-dollar note issued by the group’s Mexican holding company, and the ultimate parent has been in Chapter 11 since March 2025. Dolphin Cove itself was never in bankruptcy and continued trading as an independently listed Jamaican company.

What happens to minority shareholders?

Jamaican takeover rules require the buyer to make a mandatory follow-up offer to all remaining shareholders within thirty days of acquiring control. Those minorities hold about a fifth of the company, roughly 78 million shares, worth in the region of 860 million Jamaican dollars at recent prices.

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