Description

About the Event

Secured transactions law is at the crossroads of property, contracts, and insolvency laws. This creates a tension in its reform. The American law of secured transactions, primarily contained in Article 9 of the American Uniform Commercial Code, has long served as a model for secured transactions law as can be seen by the adoption of the core principles of the American law in the UNICTRAL Model Law of Secured Transactions, the Cape Town Convention, and the domestic laws of countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Brunei, where personal property security statutes have been enacted. Particularly, the UNCITRAL Model Law has been or is being enacted by a number of states, and has influenced a number of other uniform law texts. The Model Law is a comprehensive uniform law dealing with security interests in all types of movable property with limited exceptions. It implements the recommendations of the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions, including a supplement on security interests in intellectual property and a guide on registration.

The reform of secured transactions law in England has been debated since the 1970s. English secured transactions law is complex, prone to uncertainty in some areas and hard to access, particularly by those from different legal backgrounds. The same can be said of secured transactions law in countries such as Singapore and Hongkong, which is primarily based on English law for historical reasons. In England, possible reform has been the subject of a number of reports, including the 2005 report by the Law Commission. Since then, there has been some limited and targeted reform, but, unlike many other countries around the world, there has been no wholesale overhaul along principles which are increasingly becoming recognised as ‘modern’. England faces three choices: doing nothing; introducing a personal property security statute; or drafting a secured transactions code by taking the basic principles of the current law, strip them of their unnecessary complications and write them down in a way that is appropriate to twenty first century transactions. In Singapore and Hongkong, however, much less attention has been paid to secured transactions law reform, although any developments in England are likely to be influential.

This symposium will discuss these comparative approaches to secured transactions law and important issues that affect financing transactions and
law reform activities.

Convenors: Prof Dora Neo and Prof Orkun Akseli

Click here for:

• Full Conference Brochure