Courts professions and regulation
Australia’s “practical insolvency regime … sometimes more of a rough and ready process and not an exact science … a trade-off …”
The Federal Court has dismissed a challenge to deeds of company arrangement of two property development companies and not put ...
Liquidator’s registration suspended not cancelled, by agreement
In A liquidator disciplinary decision – some regulatory insights | Murrays Legal Commentary , I reported an AAT decision refusing ...
‘Modernising’ insolvency communications
The Australian government’s consultation paper – Modernising Business Communications – Improving the Technology Neutrality[1] of Treasury Portfolio Laws, of December ...
Australian root and branch bankruptcy reform – creditors’ rights? Elizabeth (Ist) laws? SMEs? …
While COVID-19 restrictions on creditors in bankruptcy have ended, though now with an increased $10,000 threshold, the experience should prompt ...
Australia’s new liquidator registration processes, and its ‘new liquidators’
On 30 December 2020, ASIC issued guidance on the new liquidator registration processes that apply in Australia two days hence ...
Bad bankruptcy notices
A bankruptcy notice was found to have been wrongly issued by the Official Receiver because it did not attach a ...
The financial viability of personal insolvency practice in Australia
The Australian bankruptcy regulator – AFSA – has been making inquiries about the financial health of bankruptcy trustee firms during ...
Bankruptcy threshold to be increased from $5,000 to $10,000
The Australian government has not been ignoring personal insolvency reform in 2020, despite its recent small business reforms dealing only ...
Does small business count?
This Ombudsman’s follow up report – Small Business Counts – examines small to medium business enterprises (SMEs) from an economics ...
Australian insolvency practitioner disciplinary decisions – short but to what point?
This report of two insolvency practitioner disciplinary decisions in Australia will be brief because the decisions, or their publicly released ...
Australia’s small business restructuring practitioners
Australia is proposing a sub-group of liquidator accountants to assist in administering its new corporate SME insolvency laws, set to ...
Data Availability and Transparency Bill and Australia’s SME insolvency reforms
Following on some decades of government inattention to the collection of adequate statistical data in insolvency, but with law reforms ...
Where’s personal insolvency nowadays? Australian parliamentary confusion
This rather painful transcript of Senate estimates hearing on 27 October 2020 illustrates many things but in particular how small ...
Caution against “reasoning backwards” in assessing the validity of liquidators’ litigation
A judge has cautioned against “reasoning backwards” to assume that insolvency practitioners’ failed or injudicious legal proceedings either should not ...
SME insolvency reforms – a one year bankruptcy and more
The Australian government’s 2015 proposal to reduce the 3 year period for the imposition of the restrictions of bankruptcy to ...
Spent convictions of insolvency practitioners
According to a report from Stuff in New Zealand, a long-established liquidator has been denied permission to continue to practise ...
Transparency in the selection process of liquidators and trustees
The Insolvency Law Reform Act 2016 introduced some, let’s say, novel provisions in relation to the registration and discipline of ...
Choosing practitioners to administer Australian MSME insolvencies
The Australian government is presently finalising its draft SME insolvency law reform proposals. Apart from getting the law right, as ...
Who wants to be an SME insolvency practitioner? Australia’s proposed reforms
Australia proposes to follow England’s lead in giving insolvency practitioners the initial role in new debtor in possession insolvency reforms, ...
“industry codes with their precepts, guidance and aspirational verbiage cannot dictate the proper construction and application of the relevant statutory provisions”
Soft law in Australia takes a rather strict approach in assessing the independence of insolvency practitioners, more so than, for ...
Under the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition laws, licensed New Zealand insolvency practitioners should be able to practise in Australia …
New Zealand has a new insolvency practitioner regulation regime which commenced on 1 September 2020. The regime has processes allowing ...
A health check of the Australian corporate insolvency system – updated
Commentary following issued in April 2020 is reissued in September 2020 in light of the reports that a significant proportion ...
INSOL’s report on practitioner remuneration – another perspective
There is more to insolvency practitioners’ (IP) remuneration than is usually presented, and this commentary explains relevant issues not generally ...
UK gearing up for major corporate liquidations in ‘unpredictable times for the insolvency sector …’
In what appears to be ominous but necessary preparation for the continued economic consequences of COVID-19, the UK Insolvency Service ...