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Insolvency law reform – some views
With the 3 year anniversary of Australia’s 2023 Parliamentary Joint Committee Report on Corporate Insolvency coming up,[1] and with the ...
A big bankruptcy
In explaining the consequences of bankruptcy for an individual, Keay’s Insolvency, 11th ed, [4.15] refers to the positive outcome for ...
Action already under AFSA’s Regulatory Action Statement 2025-2026
AFSA is already dealing with two issues that it has on its list for attention in its Regulatory Action Statement ...
Safe harbour adviser becoming liquidator
A liquidator gave pre-liquidation safe harbour advice under s 588GA of the Corporations Act to a company. The company ended ...
Courts’ statistics on their delayed judgments
As a 2025 postscript to my comments below, while it will often be difficult to anticipate the time that litigation ...
“Shock horror – insolvent people don’t have many assets”
While we wait for the useful annual statistics from AFSA as to dividend returns in bankruptcies in 2022-2023,* an insolvency ...
The business structures of SMEs
A recent article in the Australian Business Law Review – Not in isolation: The Rationale for a Combination of Business ...
Marginal annual increase in personal insolvencies said to be in line with high numbers forecast
There was a total of 9,930 personal insolvencies in Australia in the 2022–23 financial year – around 4% higher than ...
Peak indebtedness and preferences – an Australian authority now “offering a considered analysis of the rule”
The High Court of Australia has found that the peak indebtedness rule has no place in Australian law in the ...
Repair and maintenance
The operating system of Murrays Legal is undergoing repair and maintenance, to address a slow-down in its usual thoughtful articles ...
Can insolvency practitioners afford to be generous?
The Australian bankruptcy regulator, AFSA, has published what it terms a series of “exemplar behaviour case studies [to] showcase examples ...
International insolvency – impact of the Model Law, and more – UNCCA seminar on 27 May 2022
In a recent article on Australian insolvency law reform,[1] Justice Sarah Derrington, as chair of the Australian Law Reform Commission, ...
UK insolvency review – “better outcomes from insolvency and increased returns to creditors”?
The first and rather glowing report on the operation of the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 has been issued ...
Proposed New Zealand law restricting investigating accountants taking insolvency appointments
A bill introduced into the New Zealand parliament would mean that if ABC Insolvency Firm took a role as investigating ...
Assigning bankruptcy claims to a former trustee
A 5 day bankruptcy hearing was cancelled in March 2021, in relation to matters occurring in 2012, being challenged in ...
Is bankruptcy a life and death issue?
I was startled to be reminded of a regular question in the well-known US General Social Survey whether contemplating or ...
Bankruptcy trustee independence
The Australian personal insolvency regulator and government trustee, AFSA, has produced a useful report – Practitioner Independence in the Personal ...
The UK’s Technical Guidance for Official Receivers – a published resource for Australian practitioners and regulators
The Insolvency Service in the UK has issued an updated version of its Technical guidance for Official Receivers[1] in administering ...
Litigation representatives and bankruptcy
A daughter’s evidence that her mother’s litigation and bankruptcy proceedings had become her mother’s “entire life” with her house “full ...
New Zealand and Australian voluntary administration law
New Zealand adopted Australia’s Part 5.3A voluntary administration regime some years ago, in Part 15A of its Companies Act 1993. ...
Insolvency Law Bulletin – Janus-faced SME reforms; new easy ways to avoid preferences; and how to recover gifts of money, maybe
An article in the forthcoming Insolvency Law Bulletin describes the proposed corporate SME insolvency reforms as Janus-faced,[1] the title referring ...
Coronavirus safe harbour – beware the claytons waterfall in s 588GAAA
It is interesting to now see the clear limitations the government has placed on the protections offered by the COVID-19 ...
Duties of directors of insolvent companies – New Zealand Supreme Court decision
The NZ Supreme Court has given a significant decision on the duties of directors in the face of their company’s ...
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 ...