What Is Good Reason To Remove A Liquidator?

What is a good reason to remove a Liquidator will depend on the facts of the case but it will need to be something serious. The burden will be on the creditor to show why an application to remove a Liquidator should succeed.

In general terms the Court will expect the Liquidator to have been efficient, vigorous and unbiased; if not the Court may exercise its discretion to grant removal. However, an effective and honest liquidator will usually not be removed. Misconduct itself is not a prerequisite for an application for removal to succeed.

An example of how the Court viewed “vigour” in a particular case, can be seen in the matter of Re Keypak Homecare Ltd [1987] BCLC 409 where Millett J said:

If the liquidation had been conducted with any vigour at all, long before now the liquidator would be in a position either to allay the suspicions of the creditors or to lay papers before solicitors with a view to starting proceedings. Such proceedings might well include an application for the appointment of a receiver of Northern Brass Ltd. It need hardly be said that any such proceedings have to be conducted with great speed. Stock which has disappeared from one company is very likely to disappear from another under the same control.

…

There is nothing that can be said against Mr Edgar so far as his personal integrity is concerned. There is no evidence of any misconduct or wrongdoing on his part, or of his intimacy or friendship with the directors of the company at all. He is a professional, independent, and experienced liquidator. But I am not impressed by his performance in the conduct of this liquidation. I take the view that his experience, gained in times when liquidators were accustomed to directors simply removing the stock before liquidation and then paying for them afterwards at forced sale values, has stood him in ill stead. As a result, he has adopted a relaxed and complacent attitude to such conduct, and in my judgment the creditors, who were outraged by what they believed had happened, were perfectly reasonable in the view that Mr Edgar was not likely to pursue the directors with anything like sufficient vigour. If that was the view they adopted at the meeting, then it has been amply confirmed by all that has taken place since. I, too, take the view that Mr Edgar is unlikely to pursue the directors with anything like sufficient vigour.

…

In circumstances such as the present, the creditors are entitled to expect either the suspicious matters to be cleared up very shortly after the creditors’ meeting, or proceedings to be commenced against the former directors with speed and pursued with vigour. A liquidator who can see from the statement of affairs that there are likely to be insufficient assets to enable him to discharge his duties ought to make the position clear at the meeting of creditors and insist on being authorised by those present at the meeting to take such steps as may be necessary. But simply to stand back and do nothing and then claim that that is justified by the lack of finance is not, in my judgment, good enough.