The recent Law Commission Consultation Paper on Registration of Security Interests is to be welcomed as a major contribution to the law of security interests in England. The Law Commission recommend that the present system of transaction filing for company charges should be replaced by a notice filing system under which priorities would be determined by the time of registration, subject to an exception for purchase-money security interests. It is also recommended that the new rules should be extended to ‘‘quasi-securities’’, reservation of title clauses and assignment of receivables. The article suggests that caution should be exercised before reform proposals are enacted, lest trade creditors be unduly disadvantaged .

The Company Law Review Steering Group in its final report Modern Company Law for a Competitive Economy 1 suggested that the law relating to registration of company charges is of real importance to the capital markets as it guards against fraud and facilitates commercial borrowing. Nevertheless, the Steering Group provisionally concluded that the present system should be replaced with a system based on the ‘‘noticefiling’’ model employed in the United States under the Uniform Commercial Code, Art. 9.2 This conclusion has now been endorsed by the Law Commission in a recent Consultation Paper.3 Most types of security interest created by corporate borrowers in England require registration in order to make sure that the security interest is valid in the event of the borrower’s going into liquidation or administration. The list of registrable

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