Regulating against corporate phoenix activity

This paper considers the adequacy and efficiency of existing legal and regulatory frameworks to deal with corporate phoenix activity. Phoenix activity, which is often triggered by a solvency crisis, is estimated to cost the Australian economy up to $3 billion each year. Despite the raft of piecemeal Australian legislation directed at this activity, phoenix activity does not appear to be abating. This paper considers regulatory approaches to detection and enforcement of the underlying law. This study reveals and explores a perception that the law is deficient, and the tension that exists between the adequacy of the law and the regulatory approach.

Phoenix activity: Regulatory challenges and the law

Remedying the mischief of phoenix activity is of practical importance. The benefits include continued confidence in our economy, law that inspires best practice among directors, and law that is articulated in a manner such that penalties act as a sufficient deterrent and the regulatory system is able to detect offenders and bring them to account. Any further reforms must accommodate and tolerate legal phoenix activity. Phoenix activity pushes tolerance of entrepreneurial activity to its absolute limits. The wisest approach would be to front end the reforms so as to alleviate the considerable detection and enforcement burden upon regulatory bodies. There is little doubt that breach of the existing law is difficult and expensive to detect; and this is a significant burden when regulators have shrinking budgets and are rapidly losing feet on the ground. This front end approach may need to include restrictions on access to limited liability. The more limited liability is misused, the stronger the argument to limit access to limited liability. This paper proposes that such an approach is a legitimate next step for a robust and mature capitalist economy.

The conundrum of phoenix activity in Australia: Is further reform necessary?

Corporate phoenixing activity is estimated to cost the Australian economy $1-3 billion dollars annually. Significant questions arise as to whether existing legal frameworks are adequate to deal with phoenix activity, and whether further reform is necessary. Bills proposing reform appear to be languishing amid doubts as to their potential effectiveness. This paper will examine the conundrum presented by phoenix activity, the importance of further reform and the impact of the lack of a statutory definition of ‘phoenix activity’ on a regulatory environment that not only uses the term, but punishes offenders accused of it.

The conundrum of phoenix activity: Is further reform necessary?

Phoenix activity presents a conundrum for the law and its regulators. While there is economic cost associated with all phoenix activity, the underlying behaviour is not always illegal. A transaction with indicators of phoenix activity may be an entirely innocent and well-intentioned display of entrepreneurial spirit, albeit one that has ended in failure. Restructuring post business failure is not illegal per se. Recent reforms targeting phoenix activity fail to grapple with the vast range of behaviour that can be described as phoenix activity since they do not differentiate between legal and illegal activity. This article explores the importance of the distinction between legal and illegal phoenix activity, the extent to which the existing law captures a range of behaviour that can be described as illegal phoenix activity and the response of key regulators and governmental bodies to the absence of single law that attempts to define illegal phoenix activity.

Genetic Diversity and Adaptation of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.)

Acquiring sufficient information on the genetic variation, genetic differentiation, and the ecological and genetic relationships among individuals and populations are essential for establishing guidelines on conservation and utilization of the genetic resources of a species, and more particularly when biotic and abiotic stresses are considered. The aim of this study was to assess the extent and pattern of genetic variation in date palm (Phoenix dacttylifera L) cultivars; the genetic diversity and structure in its populations occurring over geographical ranges; the variation in economically and botanically important traits of it and the variation in its drought adaptive traits, in conservation and utilization context. In this study, the genetic diversity and relationships among selected cultivars from Sudan and Morocco were assessed using microsatellite markers. Microsatellite markers were also used to investigate the genetic diversity within and among populations collected from different geographic locations in Sudan. In a separate investigation, fruits of cultivars selected from Sudan, involved morphological and chemical characterization, and morphological and DNA polymorphism of the mother trees were also investigated. Morphological and photosynthetic adjustments to water stress were studied in the five most important date palm cultivars in Sudan, namely, Gondaila, Barakawi, Bitamoda, Khateeb and Laggai; and the mechanism enhancing photosynthetic gas exchange in date palm under water stress was also investigated. Results showed a significant (p < 0.001, t-test) differentiation between Sudan and Morocco groups of cultivars. However, the major feature of all tested cultivars was the complete lack of clustering and the absence of cultivars representing specific clones. The results indicated high genetic as well as compositional and morphological diversity among cultivars; while, compositional and morphological traits were found to be characteristic features that strongly differentiate cultivars as well as phenotypes. High genetic diversity was observed also in different populations. Slight but significant (p < 0.01, AMOVA) divergence was observed for soft and dry types; however, the genetic divergence among populations was relatively weak. The results showed a complex genetic relationships between some of the tested populations especially when isolation by distance was considered. The results of the study also revealed that date palm cultivars and phenotypes possess specific direct or interaction effects due to water availability on a range of morphological and physiological traits. Soft and dry phenotypes responded differently to different levels of water stress, while the dry phenotype was more sensitive and conservative. The results indicated that date palm has high fixation capacity to photosynthetic CO2 supply with interaction effect to water availability, which can be considered as advantageous when coping with stresses that may arise with climate change. In conclusion, although a large amount of diversity exists among date palm germplasm, the findings in this study show that the role of biological nature of the tree, isolation by distance and environmental effects on structuring date palm genome was highly influenced by human impacts. Identity of date palm cultivars as developed and manipulated by date palm growers, in the absence of scientific breeding programmes, may continue to mainly depend on tree morphology and fruit characters. The pattern of genetic differentiation may cover specific morphological and physiological traits that contribute to adaptive mechanisms in each phenotype. These traits can be considered for further studies related to drought adaptation in date palm.

Economic theory informing approaches to phoenix activity in small business: A neo-Schumpeterian analysis

The adequacy and efficiency of existing legal and regulatory frameworks dealing with corporate phoenix activity have been repeatedly called into question over the past two decades through various reviews, inquiries, targeted regulatory operations and the implementation of piecemeal legislative reform. Despite these efforts, phoenix activity does not appear to have abated. While there is no law in Australia that declares ‘phoenix activity’ to be illegal, the behaviour that tends to manifest in phoenix activity can be capable of transgressing a vast array of law, including for example, corporate law, tax law, and employment law. This paper explores the notion that the persistence of phoenix activity despite the sheer extent of this law suggests that the law is not acting as powerfully as it might as a deterrent. Economic theories of entrepreneurship and innovation can to some extent explain why this is the case and also offer a sound basis for the evaluation and reconsideration of the existing law. The challenges facing key regulators are significant. Phoenix activity is not limited to particular corporate demographic: it occurs in SMEs, large companies and in corporate groups. The range of behaviour that can amount to phoenix activity is so broad, that not all phoenix activity is illegal. This paper will consider regulatory approaches to these challenges via analysis of approaches to detection and enforcement of the underlying law capturing illegal phoenix activity. Remedying the mischief of phoenix activity is of practical importance. The benefits include continued confidence in our economy, law that inspires best practice among directors, and law that is articulated in a manner such that penalties act as a sufficient deterrent and the regulatory system is able to detect offenders and bring them to account. Any further reforms must accommodate and tolerate legal phoenix activity, at least to some extent. Even then, phoenix activity pushes tolerance of repeated entrepreneurial failure to its absolute limit. The more limited liability is misused and abused, the stronger the argument to place some restrictions on access to limited liability. This paper proposes that such an approach is a legitimate next step for a robust and mature capitalist economy.

Can an Ecdysiast Fag speak the voice of transgender? Phoenix (un)rising and the assumptions in Re Kevin revisited

"Each night the men look so surprised I change my sex before their eyes Tell me if you can What makes a man a man" - Charles Aznavour, ‘What makes a man a man (Comme ils disent)’. In (the few) Western jurisdictions in which marriage remains a forensic artefact constructed on the basis of a man|woman binary, the anatomical and heteronormative assumptions which underlie the construction of marriage remain as artificial constructs which do not map well (if indeed at all) to current social, or even medical, approaches to gender. In Re Kevin (Validity of Marriage of Transsexual) [2001] FamCA 1074, Justice Chisolm sought to recast the forensic ascription of sex against a broader set of criteria, expanding the range of sexually dimorphic anatomy used to determine sex for the purposes of marriage in Australia and incorporating observations of psycho-social gender-differentiation as factors relevant to the ultimate question for the Court — ‘What makes a man a man?’ Yet neither expansion is unproblematic. This article explores this fundamental forensic question against the background of Aznavour’s ‘Comme ils dissent’, in which the persona of un(e) stripteaseuse travesti struggles to answer precisely the same question. It concludes that Re Kevin might offer no more sophisticated an analysis of the lived reality of trans than Aznavour’s ecdysiast fag — not trans, but un travesti: "I shop and cook and sew a bit Though mum does too, I must admit I do it better."

Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Affects Environmental: presented at American Society of Civil Engineers National Water Resources Engineering Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, 14 January 1971

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal is a man-made waterway connecting the upper Chesapeake Bay with the Delaware Bay. It started in 1829 as a private barge canal with locks, two at the Delaware end, and one at the Chesapeake end. For the most part, natural tidal and non-tidal waterways were connected by short dredged sections to form the original canal. In 1927, the C and D Canal was converted to a sea-level canal, with a controlling depth of 14 feet, and a width of 150 feet. In 1938 the canal was deepened to 27 feet, with a channel width of 250 feet. Channel side slopes were dredged at 2.5:1, thus making the total width of the waterway at least 385 feet in those segments representing new cuts or having shore spoil area dykes rising above sea level. In 1954 Congress authorized a further enlargement of the Canal to a depth of 35 feet and a channel width of 450 feet. (pdf contains 27 pages)

Valorization of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) fruit processing by-products and wastes using bioprocess technology – Review

The date palm Phoenix dactylifera has played an important role in the day-to-day life of the people for the last 7000 years. Today worldwide production, utilization and industrialization of dates are continuously increasing since date fruits have earned great importance in human nutrition owing to their rich content of essential nutrients. Tons of date palm fruit wastes are discarded daily by the date processing industries leading to environmental problems. Wastes such as date pits represent an average of 10% of the date fruits. Thus, there is an urgent need to find suitable applications for this waste. In spite of several studies on date palm cultivation, their utilization and scope for utilizing date fruit in therapeutic applications, very few reviews are available and they are limited to the chemistry and pharmacology of the date fruits and phytochemical composition, nutritional significance and potential health benefits of date fruit consumption. In this context, in the present review the prospects of valorization of these date fruit processing by-products and wastes’ employing fermentation and enzyme processing technologies towards total utilization of this valuable commodity for the production of biofuels, biopolymers, biosurfactants, organic acids, antibiotics, industrial enzymes and other possible industrial chemicals are discussed