The Centenary of the Voluntary Liquidation Act 1891

Abstract

Recent trends in Australia have prompted some comparisons with the economic history of the 1890s. In Victoria, one of the key legislative responses to that earlier crisis was the Voluntary Liquidation Act 1891 (Vic.), purportedly enacted to keep companies afloat as, in the aftermath of the land boom of the 1890s, a wave of insolvencies and liquidations began threatening Melbourne land compoanies and financial institutions. To mark the Act's centenary, the author comments here on its origins and effects.