Statutory Priorities in Corporate Insolvency Law An Analysis of Preferred Creditor Status

Who enjoys statutory preferred creditor status? What justifications exist for jurisdictions to maintain statutes that favour 'priority' creditors over other creditors and contributories? This book examines preferential debts derived from specific legislative provisions applying to corporate insolvency. In exploring the concept of preferential treatment, Statutory Priorities in Corporate Insolvency Law includes chapters that provide a doctrinal, theoretical and historical analysis of who enjoys preferred creditor status. As well as examining the traditional major categories of priorities, this work also identifies potential new categories for priority status such as environmental clean-up costs, international creditors, tort claimants and consumers among other non-consensual creditors. While the study focuses on Australian corporate insolvency law, where appropriate, comparisons are made with other common law jurisdictions, particularly the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the US.

Contents: Preface; Introducing statutory priorities in corporate solvency; The evolution of statutory priorities; Theoretical perspectives and visions for statutory priorities; The statutory priority of administrative expenses: a matter of rent, requisite expenses and administrator remuneration; Employees as priority creditors: still the focus of attention after 180 years of statutory protection; Government debt and taxation as a statutory priority; Can a new statutory priority for environmental expenses be justified?; Consumer prepayments and reward schemes: could these be the next statutory priorities?; Musing on other possibilities for statutory priorities; The justification of statutory priorities as a keystone to further research and action; Bibliography; Index.

Christopher F Symes is Associate Professor, Flinders University School of Law, Adelaide, Australia. He teaches corporate and commercial law. He is author of Bankruptcy Law (2004) for Thomsons. He is a barrister and solicitor in the High Court of Australia and is a member of the Law Council of Australia's Insolvency and Reconstruction subcommittee.