Responsible Risk-Takers: Notions of Directorial Responsibility—Past Present and Future

This article has at its heart the current New Labour Government's notion of the director as a responsible risk-taker, but takes as its immediate focal point the proposals set out for consultation in the Insolvency Service's 2000 paper, Bankruptcy: A Fresh Start, and their recent incorporation into the White Paper, Opportunity for All in a World of Change. Although focused principally on bankruptcy, the notions of respectability which may be said to underpin these measures at a fundamental level will also be examined through the prism of the mid-to-late nineteenth century case law and commentary surrounding the emergence of the modern corporate form. It will be suggested that there is a marked similarity between many of the concerns which were being aired at that time and those presently at issue, and that moreover the nineteenth century fraud trials in fact provide a much more profound discussion of the underlying issues than do the modern disqualification cases.