Floating Charges in Scotland: New Perspectives and Current Issues

Jonathan Hardman and Alisdair MacPherson (eds)

This new book showcases a variety of new insights into the floating charge. It is vital to secured transactions in Scotland and plays a key role in access to finance and corporate insolvency. Leading experts at the forefront of the topic deliver wide-ranging coverage of the history, theory, practice and potential reform of Scotland’s floating charge. They examine floating charges from diverse approaches including ‘black letter’, socio-legal, law and economics, and comparative perspectives.

The book can be purchased here

About the editors

Jonathan Hardman is a Lecturer in International Commercial Law at the University of Edinburgh. Before this, he was a solicitor in private practice and honorary lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Jonathan has published articles in the Juridical Review, Edinburgh Law Review and Journal of International Banking and Finance Law. He is author of ‘A Practical Guide to Granting Corporate Security in Scotland’ (W Green, 2018).

Alisdair D. J. MacPherson is Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Aberdeen. He has published articles in the Juridical Review and Edinburgh Law Review. He is a co-author of Commercial Law in Scotland, 5th edition (W Green, 2018) with Fraser Davidson, Denis Garrity, Laura Macgregor and Lorna Richardson.

Contents

Foreword
Lord Drummond Young

Editors’ Preface and Acknowledgments
Jonathan Hardman & Alisdair D. J. MacPherson

Part I: The History of Floating Charges

1. The ‘Pre-History’ of Floating Charges in Scots Law
Alisdair D. J. MacPherson

2. Borrowing on the Undertaking: Scottish Statutory Companies
Ross G Anderson

3. The Genesis of the Scottish Floating Charge
Alisdair D. J. MacPherson

4. The Story of the Scots Law Floating Charge: 1961 to Date
George L. Gretton

Part II: Theoretical, Comparative and Policy Perspectives

5. Law and Economics of the Floating Charge
Jonathan Hardman

6. Floating Charges and Moral Hazard: Finding Fairness for Involuntary and Vulnerable Stakeholders
Jennifer L. L. Gant

7. Hohfeld and the Scots Law Floating Charge
Jonathan Hardman

8. The Species and Structure(s) of the Floating Charge: The English Law Perspective on the Scottish Floating Charge
Magda Raczynska

Part III: Practice, Doctrine and the Future

9. The Ranking of Floating Charges
Jonathan Hardman and Alisdair D. J. MacPherson

10. The Floating Charge and Insolvency Law
Donna McKenzie Skene

11. The Empirical Importance of the Floating Charge in Scotland
Jonathan Hardman and Alisdair D. J. MacPherson

12. Reform of the Scottish Floating Charge
Andrew J. M. Steven

Index

The Global Corporate Law brings together those exploring the company regulation from around the globe. In the present era of de-globalisation, policy-makers have been either slow, reluctant or unwilling to recognise the importance of global exchanges. Following the disruption to supply chains in the wake of Brexit and now the conflict in Ukraine, there is now widespread acknowledgement that commerce is global in nature. Yet, the international commercial exchanges are not themselves new. Companies have long looked to new markets to expand and entrepreneurs have built new customer bases overseas since time immemorial. Traders have often sought finance, agents or intermediaries to facilitate the sale of goods. Law, of course, influences the terms of commercial transactions at all levels.