A. INTRODUCTION

B. LEGISLATION: A BIRD's EYE VIEW

C. CONSULTATIONS AND REPORTS

D. SOME PARTICULAR TOPICS

E. PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

A. INTRODUCTION

Three score years have passed, during which the floater has changed (one hesitates to write ‘developed’). Most of the changes have been in matters of detail, but there have been two major exceptions: enforcement, and ranking. As to the first there was the introduction of receivership by the Companies (Floating Charges and Receivers) (Scotland) Act 1972 (the 1972 Act) and its replacement, by the Enterprise Act 2002, by administration. As to the second, ranking, there have been two major changes, in 2002 and in 2020. The Enterprise Act 2002 effected: (a) a ranking downgrade, through the introduction of the ‘prescribed part’; and (b) a ranking upgrade through the abolition of Crown preference. This abolition was, however, reversed by the Finance Act 2020, so that the ranking of the floater is, from 2020, lower than it has ever been. In addition to these actual changes there have been some unimplemented changes and these too will be mentioned.

To list every actual or proposed change, however minor, would make dull reading, so what follows is selective, but, even with selection, a connected and engaging narrative is hardly possible. One of the difficulties (and not only a difficulty confronting the historian) is that the floater is not a neatly demarcated topic. It is an area of land co-owned by three neighbouring proprietors, all strong-willed, namely (in alphabetical order, so as to upset nobody) the Laird of Company Law, the Laird of Insolvency Law and the Laird of Property Law. And between this co-owned area of land and the estates of those three lairds can be found no stockproof dykes, hedges or fences.

Critics of the floater will find in this history not much of comfort; perhaps they will opine that after sixty years the floater is not much better than it was in 1961.