Receivers: are “crooks”?

The registered liquidators I speak to have a real sense of being under close and careful scrutiny.  ASIC is an increasingly active regulator – as evidenced in the most recent enforcement report (available here).  The roughly 85% of registered liquidators who are ARITA members must also comply with its comprehensive Code of Professional Practice (available here), or risk facing its Professional Conduct Committee.  And many would say that FEG – an active and well-resourced priority creditor – provides additional scrutiny to receiverships where employee priorities are involved.

It is clear from the evidence provided to the Senate Select Committee on Lending to Primary Production Customers (available here) however, that some of the borrowers subject to receivership do not see – or do not appreciate – the level of scrutiny and supervision.

One borrower claimed that asset sale proceeds “finish up in the receiver-manager’s accounts” and do not reduce the farmer’s debt – a “systemic misappropriation of those funds” by the “most corrupt, the most unscrupulous, the most unethical industry in Australia.”

Another debtor said that receivers “are crooks down and out,” and a former rural agent described the insolvency profession as “the greatest bunch of virtually bloody criminals and they get away with it.”

Insolvency practitioners may argue that those giving evidence are the most vocal of an unrepresentative minority, but it seems that their evidence may be having an impact.  The committee chair closed the Perth hearing with a reminder that the inquiry was “not only into lending practices, including default, but also into other service providers associated with this sector, including receivers, brokers and agents.”

The reputation of the insolvency profession remains an ongoing issue, and we should not take outsiders’ understanding – of a technically complex function – for granted.

Postscript: Some comment on the later deliberations of the Inquiry is here: Receivers are ‘inhuman’?