Download or read book The Insolvency Service written by House of Commons Business and Enterprise and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-05-06 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the economic downturn there has been an alarming increase in the number of companies entering liquidation and unprecedented numbers of people are being made bankrupt. So the Committee decided to review the work of the Insolvency Service and found it to operate in a generally efficient and effective way. The investigation, though, uncovered concerns about the insolvency regime. Public confidence in the insolvency regime will be damaged unless prompt, robust and effective action is taken to ensure that pre-pack administrations (when a company's business and assets are sold on terms that were negotiated between the buyer and the administrator before the company formally entered administration) are transparent and free from abuse. This causes particular outrage where the existing management buy back the business and continue to trade clear of the original debts ("Phoenix pre-packs"). Pre-packs of this kind fuel concerns about illegitimate, self-serving alliances between directors and insolvency practitioners. The interests of unsecured trade creditors must take a higher priority, especially in "phoenix" pre-pack administrations. The Committee welcomes the new practice statement, Statement of Insolvency Practice 16, which aims to increase the transparency of pre-packs. Monitoring of its implementation, in the recession, becomes a matter of considerable urgency. Insolvency practitioners' remuneration is perceived as unduly high by many creditors: the Insolvency Service should publicise the results of it monitoring to see whether insolvency practitioners are complying with the current practice statement governing the approval of their fees. The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform must ensure the Service's funding arrangements are sufficiently robust to handle the very high levels of insolvency.

Download or read book The Insolvency Service written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee has today published a report containing a number of conclusions and recommendations resulting from its inquiry into the Insolvency Service, including: (i) without an increase in resources the investigations unit will be unable to increase the number of cases it can prosecute which will further undermine stakeholder confidence; (ii) there is a risk that further reductions in annual running costs and staff may put undue pressure on the Insolvency Service to deliver; (iii) it is clear from the evidence that the fee-generated income model for the Official Receiver Service is unreliable in the current economic climate (iv) issues remain with pre-pack administration, which need to be addressed; (v) given the level of debt relief they can receive, it would not be unreasonable to increase the £525 upfront fee that individual debtor bankrupts have to pay. The Committee welcomes the news that the regulators and the insolvency industry have been working together to create common regulatory standards across the profession. The creation of a single gateway for complaints, common standards and a common appeals process would be an important step in this regard. The Service should be required to publish an annual report that charts progress in this area.

Download or read book Debt and Austerity written by Jodi Gardner and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-27 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the complex interactions between debt and austerity, analysing the social, economic, and legal implications of governments’ responses to the 2008 financial crisis.

Download or read book International Monetary Fund Annual Report 2012 written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The IMF's 2012 Annual Report chronicles the response of the Fund's Executive Board and staff to the global financial crisis and other events during financial year 2012, which covers the period from May 1, 2011, through April 30, 2012. The print version of the Report is available in eight languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish), along with a CD-ROM (available in English only) that includes the Report text and ancillary materials, including the Fund's Financial Statements for FY2012.

Download or read book The Stationery Office Annual Catalogue written by Stationery Office (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cyber Frauds Scams and their Victims written by Mark Button and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crime is undergoing a metamorphosis. The online technological revolution has created new opportunities for a wide variety of crimes which can be perpetrated on an industrial scale, and crimes traditionally committed in an offline environment are increasingly being transitioned to an online environment. This book takes a case study-based approach to exploring the types, perpetrators and victims of cyber frauds. Topics covered include: An in-depth breakdown of the most common types of cyber fraud and scams. The victim selection techniques and perpetration strategies of fraudsters. An exploration of the impact of fraud upon victims and best practice examples of support systems for victims. Current approaches for policing, punishing and preventing cyber frauds and scams. This book argues for a greater need to understand and respond to cyber fraud and scams in a more effective and victim-centred manner. It explores the victim-blaming discourse, before moving on to examine the structures of support in place to assist victims, noting some of the interesting initiatives from around the world and the emerging strategies to counter this problem. This book is essential reading for students and researchers engaged in cyber crime, victimology and international fraud.

Download or read book Criminal Law Reform Now written by J J Child and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you could change one part of the criminal law, what would it be? The editors put this question to nine leading academics and practitioners. The first nine chapters of the collection present their responses in the form of legal reform proposals, with topics ranging across criminal law, criminal justice and evidence – including confiscation, control orders, criminal attempts, homicide, assisted dying, the special status of children, time restrictions on prosecution, the right to silence, and special measures in court. Each chapter is followed by a comment from a different author, providing an additional expert view on each reform proposal. Finally, the last two chapters broaden the debate to discuss criminal law reform in general, examining various reform bodies and mechanisms across England, Wales and Scotland. Criminal Law Reform Now highlights and explores the current reform debates that matter most to legal experts, with each chapter making a case for positive change.

Download or read book Doing Business 2015 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelfth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 189 economies, Doing Business 2015 measures regulations affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity: Starting a business Dealing with construction permits Getting electricity Registering property Getting credit Protecting minority investors Paying taxes Trading across borders Enforcing contracts Resolving insolvency Labor market regulations This year's report will present data for a second city for the 11 economies with more than 100 million inhabitants. These are Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, and the United States. Three of the 10 topics covered have been expanded, with further plans to expand on five additional indicators in next year's report. Additionally, the Doing Business rankings are now based on the distance to the frontier measure where each economy is evaluated based on how close their business regulations are to the best global practices. This provides a more precise view of each economy's performance and its improvement over time. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2014, ranks economies on their overall 'ease of doing business,' and analyzes reforms to business regulation identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. Doing Business illustrates how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. It is a flagship product produced in partnership by the World Bank and IFC that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 60 economies have used the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 2,000 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.

Download or read book House of Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee Open Access HC 99 I written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government's commitment to increasing access to published research findings and its desire to achieve full open access are welcomed in this report from the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. However, whilst Gold open access - where authors publish their articles in an open access journal that provides free immediate open access to all of its articles on the publisher's website - is a desirable ultimate goal, focusing on it during the transition to a fully open access world is a mistake. The Government and Research Council UK should reconsider their preference for Gold open access during the five year transition period, and give due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green open access and repositories have to play as the UK moves towards full open access. (Authors opting for Green open access publish in any subscription journal, and then make their peer-reviewed final draft freely accessible online by self-archiving or depositing the article in a repository (either institutional or disciplinary) upon acceptance for publication.) Other recommendations include: promotion of standardisation and compliance across subject and institutional repositories; mitigation against the impact on universities of paying Article Processing Charges out of their own reserves; introduce a reduced VAT rate for e-journals; non-disclosure clauses should not be used in publishing contracts that include the use of public funds; BIS must review its consultation processes to ensure that lessons are learned from the lack of involvement of businesses, particularly SMEs, in the formation of open access policy

Download or read book House of Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee Draft Consumer Rights Bill HC 697 I written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-23 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government's draft Consumer Rights Bill has the potential to consolidate, simplify and modernise consumer law however issues and inconsistencies must be resolved. The current proposals would apply a statutory right that services under a contract must be provided with reasonable care and skill [a fault-based standard]. This does not provide sufficient consumer protection. The Draft Bill should require that services must achieve the stated result, or one which could be reasonably expected [an outcomes-based standard]. As the Bank of Ireland case demonstrated, the right to terminate a contract does not necessarily protect consumers from detriment. This report recommends an addition to the grey list - the indicative list of contract terms which may be regarded as unfair. The Government's proposals for enhanced consumer measures, which would require traders that have breached consumer law to compensate consumers, are welcome. However, private enforcers should also be able to use them. The collective proceedings regime has the potential to improve access to redress for victims of competition law breaches but the Government must clarify the certification requirements for such proceedings. The creation of rights and remedies for digital content is welcome, but the Government must do more to communicate how the proposals will work in practice. Under the draft Bill, the remedies available to consumers of digital content would depend on whether the content is intangible (such as a music download) or tangible (such as a CD). In appropriate circumstances, consumers should have the right to reject and obtain a refund irrespective of whether they purchase intangible or tangible digital content

Download or read book House of Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee Payday Loans HC 789 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-20 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid expansion of the payday loan sector has been accompanied by a significant increase in the number of people experiencing serious debt problems which suggests people should think carefully before taking out such loans. Furthermore the number of payday loan adverts seen by 4-15 year olds has increased from 3 million in 2008 to 596 million in 2012. The Committee's recommendations include: all payday loan companies should be required to resubmit their affordability tests to the FCA for approval before they can continue in the sector and the FCA should make clear that if real-time data sharing has not been established by July 2014 it will mandate its use as a condition of trading in the sector; a limit should be set of one roll-over per payday loan; Payday lenders should be required to give 3 working days notice before using a continuous payment authority [CPA] and each notice should set out the right of a customer to cancel the CPA; the FCA should discuss with the Information Commissioners Office how texts on payday loans could be disaggregated to identify the extent of bad practice and if this evidence base demonstrates inappropriate targeting or marketing, the FCA should move to ban all brokering of payday loans through email, texts and other personal mobile devices; when payday loans come under the authority of the FCA, they will be subject to a levy which should be ring fenced by the Money Advice Service solely for the funding of front-line debt advice services

Download or read book The Origins of Modern Financial Crime written by Sarah Wilson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent global financial crisis has been characterised as a turning point in the way we respond to financial crime. Focusing on this change and ‘crime in the commercial sphere’, this text considers the legal and economic dimensions of financial crime and its significance in societal consciousness in twenty-first century Britain. Considering how strongly criminal enforcement specifically features in identifying the post-crisis years as a ‘turning point’, it argues that nineteenth-century encounters with financial crime were transformative for contemporary British societal perceptions of ‘crime’ and its perpetrators, and have lasting resonance for legal responses and societal reactions today. The analysis in this text focuses primarily on how Victorian society perceived and responded to crime and its perpetrators, with its reactions to financial crime specifically couched within this. It is proposed that examining how financial misconduct became recognised as crime during Victorian times makes this an important contribution to nineteenth-century history. Beyond this, the analysis underlines that a historical perspective is essential for comprehending current issues raised by the ‘fight’ against financial crime, represented and analysed in law and criminology as matters of enormous intellectual and practical significance, even helping to illuminate the benefits and potential pitfalls which can be encountered in current moves for extending the reach of criminal liability for financial misconduct. Sarah Wilson’s text on this highly topical issue will be essential reading for criminologists, legal scholars and historians alike. It will also be of great interest to the general reader. The Origins of Modern Financial Crime was short-listed for the Wadsworth Prize 2015.

Download or read book House of Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee The Retail Sector Volume I HC 168 I written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Committee calls for a wholesale review that goes beyond the administration of business rates to examine whether retail taxes should be based on sales rather than the rateable value of a property; whether retail needs its own system of business taxation; and how frequently revaluations should take place. In the interim, the Committee calls for a six months business rates amnesty for businesses occupying empty properties. This would go further than the 50% reduction announced in the Autumn Statement and would encourage new businesses to the High Street. The Committee also recommends that in the interim the Government review whether business rates are more appropriately linked to CPI or RPI and calls for annual increases to be linked to a 12 month average of either RPI or CPI, with a cap at 2%. This would replace the current link to a monthly snapshot of RPI. The Government should provide information on how and how much of the money allocated to the Portas Pilots is being spent. This follows concerns that much of the money allocated to the pilots has not been spent. The Government is also urged to outline the results of its latest STEM skills analysis and outline the action it will take to tackle any skills shortages. The retail sector also needs to encourage more staff to be trained at Apprenticeship Level 3 and above, and consider developing language skills to enhance the international consumers' experience

Download or read book Bankruptcy written by Joseph Spooner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-11 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excessive household debt has allowed for economic growth, but this model has become increasingly unstable. Spooner examines bankruptcy law as a potential solution.

Download or read book The Debt Respite Scheme Breathing Space Moratorium and Mental Health Crisis Moratorium England and Wales Regulations 2020 written by GREAT BRITAIN. and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enabling power: Financial Guidance and Claims Act 2018, ss. 7 (2) (5) (a) (5) (c) (5) (d) (6) (a). Issued: 21.07.2020. Sifted: -. Made: -. Laid: -. Coming into force: In accord. with regulation 1(2) to (7) Effect: None. Territorial extent & classification: E/W. For approval by resolution of each House of Parliament and of Senedd Cymru.. For approval by resolution of each House of Parliament

Download or read book Doing Business 2020 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.

Download or read book Governance of Distressed Firms written by David Milman and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÔThe corporate governance of companies in financial difficulty is an issue of great importance for the satisfaction in insovlency of the conflicting interests of the various stakeholders. It also raises significant public interest concerns. With analytical skill commensurate with his reputation as a leading corporate law scholar, David Milman has provided a masterly study of this very complex topic that often seems shrouded in mystery to all those outside a narrow circle of insolvency experts. MilmanÕs book is comprehensive, sheds light in many complex and challenging aspects of distressed company governance, and provides a set of insightful proposals for reform of requisite UK law and practice. Clarity of analysis coupled with originality of approach means that this book will be a major addition to corporate law scholarship.Õ Ð Emilios Avgouleas, The University of Edinburgh, UK ÔThis is an important and timely book which makes a really valuable contribution to corporate law scholarship. It brings together for the first time, two crucial aspects of the law in its consideration of the application of corporate governance to firms facing insolvency. In the current environment, this is a book which academics and practitioners alike will find invaluable. Professor Milman is one of EuropeÕs foremost experts in insolvency law and his mastery of the subject is evident in this clear exposition of an important topic. I particularly liked the manner in which Professor Milman fuses theory, law and practice giving the reader the benefit of his own expert insight and experience. His style of writing makes it accessible to all readers.Õ Ð Blanaid Clarke, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland ÔAnglo-American corporate law scholarship focuses obsessively on the governance of large, public corporations. It has little to say about the governance of financially distressed firms and less still to say about the governance of small businesses, even though SMEs are the bedrock of any functioning national or regional economy. In the Governance of Distressed Firms, David Milman, one of the UKÕs leading and most influential commercial law scholars, redresses the balance. His original and timely book provides a critique of the current legal framework applicable to directors and insolvency practitioners together with a blueprint for reform. Informed by practical and comparative insights, it deserves to be widely read.Õ Ð Adrian J. Walters, IIT Chicago-Kent, US ÔThis is a bold and exciting monograph, which breaks new ground in exploring the concept of corporate governance as applied to and within insolvent firms, concentrating mainly on small firms. Intellectually acute, with deep comparative insights, Governance of Distressed Firms also has indisputable practical value, especially given the huge growth in the commitment, by dozens of countries, to business rescue and reorganization. Scholars and practitioners alike will be very indebted to David Milman for this volume.Õ Ð Harry Rajak, University of Sussex, UK This detailed book examines how the law can provide a discrete governance regime for financially distressed firms. The concept of a distressed firm covers businesses that are struggling, but have not yet entered formal insolvency, as well as those businesses that are undergoing a formal insolvency process. With reference primarily to English law, this study encompasses both limited liability companies and limited liability partnerships with a focus on the regulation both of company directors and insolvency practitioners. It offers recommendations for improvements in governance mechanisms and notes that many of the governance shortfalls that occur can be related to the ease of access given to those who wish to trade with the benefit of limited liability. Providing an up to date analysis in a fast evolving area of law, this book will appeal to academics, postgraduate students, practitioners and policy makers.