“Well, Michael, is there going to be a recession?” or “You must be really swamped!” I have lost count of how many times people have quizzed me about the state of the UK economy and my workload. In response to the first point, I humbly say that I am not (yet) the nation’s chief economist and I have no more idea about the likelihood of a recession than a London cabbie. To the second, I say that the market has not (yet) seen a sudden surge in restructurings and insolvencies; although I can sometimes, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, pick up, snake-like, a scent of something in the air telling me that there will be a lot more restructuring and insolvency work in the near future.
My heightened senses, alas, do not give me special insight as to whether the downturn, if that is what it will be, will take any particular form or affect any particular part of the economy or all of it. In this state of uncertain anticipation, it is perhaps an appropriate moment to pause and take breath and to highlight some of the issues (both legal and commercial) that have been left hanging in the air since we were last burning the midnight oil on big-ticket restructuring and insolvency work. In this article, I will highlight those issues and then say a few words on a hot topic that has come up while I have been writing this article; namely the recent proposals to deal with bank insolvency in the dramatic wake of the Northern Rock crisis.
