Insolvency Proceedings have never been treated in English law as an exclusively private matter between debtor and his creditors. The community itself has always been recognised as having an important interest in them.
There are two ways in which one could say that Insolvency Proceedings could be treated as a private matter between debtor and his creditors. The first would be that insolvency proceedings are solely concerned with protecting the interest of the particular creditor who initiated the proceedings, by ensuring he is paid the debt owed to him. The second would be that insolvency proceedings are concerned with protecting the interests of the creditors as a whole, disregarding the interests of other stakeholders in the company. It will be argued in this essay that neither insolvency proceedings, nor Insolvency law more generally, treats them as a private matter in either of these two senses. The wider interests of the bankrupt individual/the members of the insolvent company and of the community at large are taken into account and protected. This has always been the case in English law; however, in the past, particularly before the reforms resulting from the report of the Cork Report in 1982,
