Reforming the English law of secured transactions in personal property

Abstract

The English law of secured transactions in personal property is of a rather piecemeal nature, largely built on case law but with some statutory intervention. It lacks a coherent structure and contains a number of anomalies, not least in the way it places emphasis on form rather than substance and in the manner in which it attempts to distinguish between different types of security and between secured transactions and other forms of proprietary financing. This article examines the case for reform of the law and puts forward proposals drawn from suggestions previously made by the Law Commission which, in turn, had been developed from the reformed systems that operate in North America and New Zealand and which are now also being implemented in Australia.