Analysis: It's all about entitlement - and it can be a bun-fight

Published on Thursday 6 January 2011 17:05

THE job that we do as insolvency practitioners is all about entitlement - who's entitled to what?

If we're appointed to a company we can only deal with that company's assets and its creditors. In the case of Farepak, what you had was a huge number of people involved. Anything involving members of the public is going to take far longer and be more complex, because you're spending far more time dealing with them and explaining things to them. If you're dealing with commercial creditors, they have a better understanding of how to deal with an insolvency practitioner.

There will always be creditors who may want items back. They may want stock back which they think is theirs. They might have a claim over goods that you don't think is theirs. They might have securities which are very complex. And, of course, everyone wants what they're entitled to.

It can at times be a complete bun-fight.

That's where very often the lawyers come in and you have to go through quite complex legal positions.

As insolvency practitioners, we have a statutory obligation to tell people what we're doing, so there's quite a lot of advertising, a lot of writing round to everybody.

There will be a reason in every case why it is dragging on so long, and I don't think people should forget that we are one of the most heavily regulated industries.

Everybody is keen to talk about kicking the insolvency bandwagon when the number of insolvencies go up. We didn't get the company into a mess, we didn't lend to it, we're not the bankers. So at the end of the day, if you want somebody to sort this out and save jobs and get any kind of money back, then you need us.

• Eileen Maclean is a licensed insolvency practitioner based in Edinburgh.