Who gets paid what, and in what order, when a company or individual cannot meet its debts — the framework that determines every creditor's recovery.
Insolvency rarely leaves enough to go round, so the law must rank competing claims rather than satisfy them all. This chapter starts with the statutory order of priority and the pari passu principle, then examines how fixed and floating charges shape a secured creditor's position and why timely registration of a charge is decisive. It moves on to preferential creditors — employees and certain tax debts — and the prescribed part carved out for unsecured creditors, before turning to the liquidator's powers to unwind floating charges, transactions at an undervalue and preferences. It closes with mandatory set-off, the moratorium in administration, and how distribution works in personal bankruptcy.
