Navigating businesses through difficult circumstances, Waterstone provides pragmatic informed advice on business distress scenarios and manages recovery and insolvency appointments for best case outcomes for stakeholders.
Recovery & insolvency work is highly legal in nature. Insolvency law is a specialised field and Waterstone invests in its legal team to ensure that we have the knowledge and capability to progress appointments effectively.
Waterstone specialises in recovery and insolvency appointments, consulting & advice to firms in distress or turnaround scenarios and providing expert evidence for court proceedings when called on.
Waterstone takes prides in the work and outcomes that it achieves. The team have published a series of case studies that describe successful appointment outcomes. Waterstone regularly tests the law in court and this work has contributed to the general body of case of law on insolvency.
With liquidation numbers on the increase for several years consecutively, we are left wondering where the turning point is and how bad it can get. The answer may not be positive when considering the peak numbers of 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Although 2023 (1,982 liquidations) seems high compared to the last 3 years, the reality is that when compared further back to 2001 they have been at very low level relatively.
Below are three indicators that offer some insight into liquidations relative to number of companies:
2001: This year had the highest liquidation to incorporation rate over the past 23 years. 258,865 companies were registered with 1,932 liquidations recorded for the year, or 1 liquidation per 134 registered companies.
2009: The highest annual liquidations in a single year, with 3,433. It is important to note that in the 8 years prior, the total number of registered companies more than doubled, with 526,627: 1 liquidation per 153 registered companies.
2023: The number of companies in 2023 sat at 726,359, with a recorded 1,838 liquidations: That is 1 liquidation per 395 companies.
The annual proportion of liquidations to number of companies in total has declined significantly from 1 in 134 to 1 in 395.
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