Shareholders of Capital Re will vote today on whether to accept a merger with Bermuda insurer ACE Ltd worth an estimated $511 million.

The special shareholders meeting will be held at 10 a.m. at the Company's office, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, 18th Floor in New York. In the cash and stock deal ACE have said they will pay $16.23 per ordinary share. If accepted, the deal will end what turned out to be an epic battle for the relative minnow of Capital Re between ACE and its rival XL Capital.

The battle stopped the free-fall in Capital Re shares and with every dramatic turn the company's share price has been hiked up even further.

The terms of the deal call for Cap Re shareholders to swap each of their shares for 0.65 shares of ACE plus $3.44 in cash to bring the value of the bid up to $14 a share. ACE will issue about 20.8 million ordinary shares and pay approximately 110.3 million in the transaction.

ACE made the sweetened bid to match XL's $14 a share all-cash bid at the end of October after a Delaware court denied an injunction sought by ACE to block negotiations between Cap Re and XL Capital.

The dramatic attempts by the two larger companies to out-bid each other began on October 7. ACE originally agreed to buy Cap Re in June in a deal in which Cap Re shareholders would swap their shares for 0.60 shares of ACE. That deal originally valued Cap Re at about $18.90 a share, or $606 million. But ACE's original offer lost about half of its value, dropping to just $10.54 a share, or about $385 million after a drop in share price.

XL then muscled in by offering $12.50 a share cash and then bumped the bid up to $13 a share cash. ACE twice raised its bid. But in November XL announced that, for the moment, it would not be offering any more bids.