220 the context of corporate insolvency law

towards fellow professionals (often IPs representing large creditors). The trade creditors become ‘largely a silent observing body only’ and cannot participate in any active sense.192 Overall the creditors’ meeting can be seen as a series of ‘almost private exchanges between the dominant professional actors’.193 The tendency to exclude ‘outsiders’ was noted above in outlining common criticism of self-regulatory mechanisms, and here we find echoes in Wheeler’s account of the IPs’ work at the creditors’ meeting. It reinforces the fear that where professionals are involved with non-experts and non-repeat players, there is unlikely to be transparency and wide accessibility.

Conclusions on insolvency practitioners

Could greater efficiency, expertise, fairness and accountability be achieved by turning away from professional self-regulation and implementing insolvency laws through other mechanisms? Few would argue for a move back to the pre-Cork era in which any person, whether qualified or not, could be appointed as a receiver or liquidator.194 Implementation through a cadre of court officials or specialist civil servants might, however, be considered.195 It should be borne in mind that:

The institutional locus of [insolvency] work has substantial concern for all parties. It determines the relative weight of public and private interests. It affects what motivations underlie the behaviour of professionals … how insulated will be the market from governmental intervention and what mechanisms, such as inspection or self-regulation, governments will initiate or support in order to ensure a public or political interest is served.196

The professional or disciplinary bases of those applying insolvency laws can, in turn, shape processes so that different knowledge bases, perceptual frameworks and bodies of expertise define and construct the issues and machineries of insolvency in different ways. They also ‘locate the solution to the problem in different institutional sites’.197 If, for example, lawyers play a central role in insolvency processes, proceedings are likely to take place in judicial or quasi-judicial settings in an adversarial fashion.198 Such processes may place a strong emphasis on fairness but they are likely to be expensive and time-consuming. In contrast, less adversarial procedures conducted by specialist civil servants may be cheaper

192 Ibid., p. 367. 193 Ibid., p. 369. 194 See Cork Report, ch. 15.

195See Carruthers and Halliday, Rescuing Business, pp. 31, 375.

196Ibid., pp. 375–6. 197 Ibid., p. 23. 198 Ibid., p. 31.