Corporate Rescue Law to the Rescue of Businesses in Trauma in Nigeria

Abstract

The failure of a company potentially affects the livelihood and well-being of those dependent upon it. The company may be the life blood of a whole town, state or country. Therefore, the chain reaction consequent upon any business failure can not be treated as banal. Forging a robust legislated corporate or business rescue regime for Nigeria is now a necessity. The regime of insolvency as contained in its statutes are antiquated and this work examines options opened to Nigeria in reforming its law to fill the void occasioned by lack of or inadequate legislation to drive a well developed restructuring process. The options include, the adoption of the highly codified American model, the United Kingdom model, informal models such as pre-pack, the court inspired model, the Debtor Restructuring and the Corporate Management models. The paper concludes that, it is not enough to have a law to drive the process, but the judicial environment and the public and private sectors must be ready to imbibe the rescue culture.

Keywords: Administrative procedure - business failure - corporate rescue - company voluntary arrangement - chapter II