The end of January saw the PPSR clock up its first decade of operation. As we light the birthday candles to celebrate 10 years, it is worthwhile reflecting on some key milestones.
Firstly, let’s look at some statistics:
Since launching on 30/01/2012, just under 28 million registrations have been lodged, of which, a little over 10 million remain current (the balance having either expired or been discharged).
While the most common type of registration is over Motor Vehicles, if we were to take registrations over ‘consumer’ property out of the equation and just look at registrations relating to business-to-business transactions, Other Goods registrations are likely to be the most common.
“we can’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend that the PPSR doesn’t exist, but that we need to whole-heartedly embrace its rules lest we lose property and rights to which we would otherwise be entitled”
What of legal milestones?
One of the more high-profile cases came shortly after the PPSR’s first birthday when receivers/liquidators of the Forge Group seized some $50 million in mobile turbine generators being leased from General Electric in the US. GE had not registered their leases on the PPSR and, despite pressure from politicians and business groups in the US and legal challenges here in Australia, ended up losing their assets for the sake of a, then, $8 registration.
The next big salutary lesson came in 2017 when Alleasing P/L found out the hard way how important it was to follow the PPSR’s rules when it came to identifying Grantors. They ended up losing around $23 million in plant and equipment that they leased to OneSteel Manufacturing P/L because their registration identified OneSteel by their ABN instead of their ACN. A harsh reminder that, when it comes to the PPSR and its rules, details matter.
The latest high-profile reminder of the need to get Grantor identification right came in May last year when BMW lost their security over a $500,000 Ferrari (GTC4 Lusso, for the luxury car aficionados) because, they registered over the ACN of a company that was acting as a trustee rather than over the ABN of the trust itself.
All cases showing, not only that we can’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend that the PPSR doesn’t exist, but that we need to whole-heartedly embrace its rules lest we lose property and rights to which we would otherwise be entitled. Our PPSR template helps to eliminate many of the common errors with registrations.
With any luck, sometime during the next 10 years we may see the recommendations of 2015’s Whittaker Report implemented and a lot more simplicity applied to a register. That would be worthy of real celebration.