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NZ accountants’ new Code obligations, with Australia close behind

Accountants in New Zealand, including those who are insolvency practitioners, are from this week required to refer relevant breaches of ...

Very leviable liquidators

In anticipating the funding bases for the government meeting ASIC’s costs of regulating insolvency practitioners (IPs), I wrote that there “should ...

Director charades continued

After giving directors the benefit of protection from liability for insolvent trading, through the ‘safe harbour reforms’, the government has ...

Protocol for International Recognition of Insolvency Proceedings Affecting Natural Persons

As INSOL International explains, this Protocol of June 2017 is a project that has been completed by members of the ...

Getting rid of liquidators

While no-one in business likes losing a client or customer, usually, it happens all the time, as a matter of ...

Advanced Business Law Conference – the major insolvency reforms: 3 October 2017

I am presenting at the Advanced Business Law Conference at the College of Law in Sydney on Tuesday 3 October 2017. ...

The AAT strikes back

Mr Dutton, the immigration minister, has been found wanting in refusing an application by a Mr Singh for a 6 week bridging ...

Is “outrageous” too strong a term to describe some of our new insolvency laws?

The question as to what parts of the Insolvency Law Reform Act 2016 have commenced may be unclear to some but ...

Accountants and NOCLAR – more than a systems update

Professional accountants in Australia will soon be bound by a new standard that could require them to report offences to ...

Creditor’s examination summons of a liquidator upheld

A creditor’s summons for the section 596A public examination of the liquidator about his sale of company property has been found ...

Penalty privilege – one says hello, the other says goodbye

There are at least two unsatisfactory stories in this. The first one first. The High Court’s decision in Rich v ...

When litigation goes wrong – costs certificates

Legal costs of parties to an appeal may be met by the government, to a certain amount, if there was some ...

Is the end result of Sakr Nominees continued “institutionalised time billing”?

While the insolvency profession might be satisfied with the final approval given to the liquidator’s remuneration, by Justice Ashley Black, in Sakr ...

A New Zealand Ponzi – the final outcome of McIntosh v Fisk

The second report of the NZ insolvency working group had deferred consideration of the application of the voidable transactions regime ...

Penalising insolvent companies – a King Charles I comparison

Regulators seeking penalties against companies in liquidation often reveal, as I have recently commented,[1] some serious signs of frustration that ...

Australia today

“… Nazi troops responded to this secret emigration campaign by inspecting all Danish boats, using specially trained dogs to sniff out ...

“Straw directors”? no kidding!

The federal government is putting through laws that would give directors of companies greater latitude to incur debts that cannot ...

Friendly and ‘friendly’

With the rather confusing term ‘friendly liquidator’ continuing to be used: by the media: Dirty Deeds: Inside Australia’s Biggest Tax ...

Challenges to trusts by bankruptcy trustees – New Zealand law reform

A recent change to the New Zealand Insolvency Act 2006 (Schedule 1, new para (x)) has given power to the ...

NSW mines and their potential environmental impacts

In the context of the recent intersections between environmental protection laws and insolvency laws, in relation to CORA laws and Linc ...

INSOL’s Directors in the Twilght Zone – Australia’s “medium risk” for its directors

INSOL International has released the 5th edition of its excellent review of the international laws regulating director conduct in the ‘twilight ...

World Bank Report on the Treatment of MSME Insolvencies

The World Bank has just released a report on small business insolvencies – Report on the Treatment of MSME Insolvency, ...

INSOL’s Statement of Principles for a Global Approach to Multi-Creditor Workouts

INSOL International has issued a second and updated edition of its Statement of Principles for a Global Approach to Multi-Creditor ...

Ethics in the practice of law: a profession, a business or both?

The Australian Academy of Law is holding its second ethics themed Sydney event on Tuesday 20 June 2017, on the question ...