The use of pre-packs or pre-positioned asset sales in Australia has traditionally been limited. This is a result of impediments to such transactions under the Australian legislative insolvency regime.

The interplay of these impeding factors means that there are few true pre-pack transactions in Australia. However, significant reform to the Australian insolvency regime is expected to be implemented in 2017. We wrote about the main aspects of that reform in our last article, `Australian insolvency law reforms aim to increase business restructuring opportunities'

The Australian government is working to significantly reform Australia’s current insolvency laws by mid-2017.

The reforms are intended to achieve greater likelihood of business preservation by introducing the flexibility to achieve real turnaround of businesses in crisis.

The proposed changes include: