Editing Receivership (section)

===Background to receivership in the UK===
{{Unreferenced section|date=April 2020}}
The [[common law]] has long recognised the concept of a receiver. Following development of the [[floating charge]], creditors were effectively able to take security over a company's entire business by means of a floating charge over the undertaking.  Security documents generally contained very wide powers of appointment such that on default the creditor could take over the business immediately and without the input of any court.  A receiver appointed to the entire business became known as a ''receiver and manager''. The receiver and manager would typically have extensive powers over the business, including the power to sell it at a time and on terms that suited the appointing creditor.

The ability to appoint a receiver and manager was a very powerful remedy, but it came to be considered unsatisfactory in that it was entirely a creature of the contract between the creditor and the borrower.  There was no general ability on the part of the borrower or any other party to review the actions of the receiver (who would generally be acting on behalf of ''the borrower'' under the security document) or seek the supervision of the court.  A general review of UK insolvency law in the 1980s began with the [[Cork Report]] and culminated in the [[Insolvency Act 1986]]. It put forward two major reforms.  First, it put the receiver and manager on a statutory footing: a receiver appointed to all or substantially all of a company's property was now an '''administrative receiver''' and subject to some statutory responsibilities.  Second, it introduced an "[[administration order]]" as an equivalent process to administrative receivership – but available to any company by court order independent of any particular security arrangement.

The UK Parliament expected that companies and creditors would use administration in preference to administrative receivership. Crucially, however, Parliament had conceded in the Insolvency Act that administrative receivership should have priority – that is, a secured creditor with a floating charge could defeat any attempt to commence an administration by appointing an administrative receiver. As a result, administration was not as popular as lawmakers had envisaged, and secured creditors habitually appointed administrative receivers to enforce security rights.  Parliament took more drastic action in the ''[[Enterprise Act 2002]]''. The administration regime was changed to make it more attractive, but also barred the right to appoint administrative receivers in any security created after 15 September 2003 (subject to certain specific exceptions).  Any attempt to do so takes effect as a power to appoint an administrator.