First Page
1032
Abstract
Livadas provides an especially adept analysis and comparison of the treatment of employees of insolvent companies in the two countries. The author convincingly demonstrates that a French "liquidation des biens" protects employee wages, benefits, and claims more extensively than an English winding-up proceeding. The French requirement of compulsory insurance to protect the wages of employees and the special privilege afforded employees against the immovable assets of a French company are without analogy in English winding-up law. Livadas punctuates the chapters on the liabilities of officers and directors, which are generally more strict in France than in England, and the priorities of distribution of assets with incomprehensible mathematical examples, complete to two decimal places.
The author's "conclusion," contained in a scant one and one-half pages at the end of this 400-page text, cry out for expansion. Several of his conclusory points have been previously mentioned only in passing, and at obscure junctures of the text. The reader senses that this author may have had many interesting observations to share but failed to present them. Livadas obviously has developed an intimate and profound understanding of his subject, but has cluttered the broad framework of this work with so much minutiae that the finished product is almost impenetrable.
Recommended Citation
Keith M. Lundin,
Book Review: The Winding-Up of Insolvent Companies in England and France,
17 Vanderbilt Law Review
1032
(1984)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vjtl/vol17/iss4/6