Inquiries conferences and reports

Some insolvency law reform ideas from Scotland and New Zealand

“ … the state is, effectively, paying insolvency practitioners to end the life of small companies … a sub-optimal solution ...

The cross-border regulation of insolvency practitioners – insights from INSOL Tokyo

I was invited to present at the INSOL International Academic Colloquium on 12 September 2023 in Tokyo on the panel ...

Public interest supports time extension for insolvency recovery action

Litigation claims brought by insolvency practitioners (IPs) are not like the usual commercial claims on behalf of a commercial, or ...

Cross-border regulation of insolvency practitioners – INSOL Tokyo – where are the government regulators?

This commentary has now been updated.  See The cross-border regulation of insolvency practitioners – Murrays Legal ============================================== I was pleased ...

The government halts its Modernising Business Registers Program after an independent review

The federal government has announced it will stop its Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program following independent review findings that the ...

PJC Recommendation – Pre-Insolvency Advisers – Part 1: summary

The full article on this topic of 1800 words, for those interested, looks that the PJC Report recommendations about “untrustworthy ...

PJC recommendation – pre-insolvency advisers – Part 1

The PJC Report on Corporate Insolvency 2023 has responded to concerns expressed about “untrustworthy pre-insolvency advisers”, those that are said ...

Sunlight on pre-insolvency advisers

Updated 14.8.23: While pondering the 2023 Parliamentary Joint Committee’s recommendations about pre-insolvency advisers, I am reminded to go back to ...

UK personal insolvency reforms – summary of responses and next steps

In my comments of July 2023 following, I reviewed the 2022 call for evidence in the UK on reform of ...

Businesses are rarely neatly arranged when insolvency strikes

While the government is thinking about the various recommendations of the PJC Report[1] about improving our current corporate insolvency laws, ...

ASIC beleaguered – updated

Updated 29 July 2023. Given the number of current and on-going inquiries into ASIC, it is as if the regulator ...

Liquidator remuneration is “a perfect example of the many competing interests that arise in a liquidation” …

and is “indicative of broader systemic factors within the insolvency system itself …”. The recent PJC Report on corporate insolvency ...

Looking more at deregistered companies

“Enforcement agencies have long been aware of the role that the abandonment [deregistration] of companies plays in illegal phoenix activity. ...

Thoughts on the PJC’s Corporate Insolvency Report

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (‘PJC’) handed down its Report into Corporate Insolvency in Australia on ...

Offence reporting by insolvency practitioners

What is said to be the limited response by ASIC to corporate misconduct reports by liquidators is the subject of ...

UK insolvency practitioners to come under direct government regulation

At the same time that the chair of the Australian PJC inquiry into corporate insolvency, Senator Deborah O’Neill, said that ...

Gender, and diversity, in insolvency practice, continued

The July 2023 PJC report into corporate insolvency[1] makes recommendations on the “problem” of the limited female representation among liquidators, ...

UK’s review of its 2020 insolvency law reforms, with Australia compared

The quality of a recent UK review of its 2020 insolvency law reforms is compared with the approach taken in ...

Increase in Australian insolvency numbers

Personal insolvency numbers show a continued increase in numbers but still well below past figures; on the other hand, corporate ...

Should the firms of insolvency practitioners be regulated, along with the practitioner?

While Australia is currently focusing on the standards of conduct of accounting firms, and their partners – see Ethics and ...

Personal insolvency statistics – March quarter increase; April monthly decrease

There is good and bad news in the latest personal insolvency statistics from AFSA. March quarter increase The full March ...

The respective complexities of corporate and personal insolvency

A question on notice of 1 March 2023 was asked by the chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporate ...

Anti-money laundering laws to be improved, including registers of beneficial owners

The 2023 budget has allocated funds for action on Anti‐Money Laundering and Counter‐Terrorism Financing (AML) laws, including a beneficial ownership ...

World Bank’s B-Ready Report on country business systems, including on the efficiency of corporate insolvency systems

This explains the World Bank’s new Business Ready initiative, which will report on the business systems of up to 180 ...