ABSTRACT
Introduction The passage and coming into force of the company charge provisions of the Companies Act 2006,1 has, for the time being at any rate, signalled the end of serious debate about the reform of English personal property security (PPS) law.2 Given the amount of work that has gone into reforming this area, it is a modest statement to say that the ‘new’ company charge provisions are a disappointment. The topic of reform has been on the agenda since 1998 when the Company Law Review project started, but the reform issue has a much longer pedigree stretching back to the early 1970s.3 This chapter will charter the evolution of security interests under English law and the regulatory response to the growth and take-up of security which has fuelled the economy since the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. Given the current economic crisis that started with excessive risk taking in the financial sector,4 which quickly spread to the general economy, it is opportune to consider the fundamentals of security and the risk management process that the taking of security implies.
