The Insolvency Service has set out a five-year plan to help financially troubled businesses seek advice sooner and to pursue directors who use company failures to evade debts.
The UK Insolvency Service has today launched a new five-year strategy built around earlier intervention for people and businesses in financial difficulty, quicker returns of money and assets, and a more forceful response to corporate misconduct.
The plan places particular emphasis on abusive ‘phoenixism’, where directors leave debts in one company and carry on substantially the same business through another. It says closer intelligence-sharing with Companies House, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and law-enforcement bodies should enable the agency to…