ABSTRACT
If insolvency law is taken to be concerned with the collective process of realising and distributing assets amongst the creditors of an insolvent, then receivership strictly has no place in a study of it. This is because the essence of a receivership is that it is a mechanism by which individual secured creditors enforce their security against debtors; historically, no collective considerations arose. It is theoretically possible for a company which has been in receivership to return to financial health and avoid liquidation. More frequently, a receiver appointed to enforce a floating charge over the whole undertaking (known since 1986 as an administrative receiver) will have achieved the sale of those parts of the business which were financially healthy and have left a corporate shell to be liquidated.2 Receiverships, however, have been so bound up with the development and operation of collective insolvency regimes, and with the development of the rules of property law which tend to be relevant in an insolvency, that it is very difficult to study insolvency law without at least a basic grasp of the nature of receivership.
