A sample review of Deeds of Company Arrangement under Part 5.3A of the Corporations Act

The limited availability of corporate insolvency statistics was the subject of a number of submissions to the 2014 Senate inquiry into ASIC. We know little of the outcome of voluntary administrations, either by way of returns to creditors or the business being preserved, or their cost. Mark Wellard, an academic, was funded under ARITA's Terry Taylor Scholarship to provide a snapshot of Deeds of Company Arrangements (DOCAs) – creditor returns, outcome of the company, and its business, industry type and time and cost involved. Mark’s report was released in 2014 and provided a measure of how Part 5.3A is working, and what, if any, changes may need to be made to our restructuring regime to improve its outcomes.