Abstract
The collapse of HIH Insurance Limited on March 15, 2001, was arguably the largest corporate collapse in Australia’s history. While the losses, estimated at between 3.6 and 5.3 billion Australian dollars, were dwarfed by examples such as the savings and loan collapse in the United States2 as well as, more recently, Enron3 and WorldCom,4 the HIH collapse has had a great impact within Australia. Many people lost disability pensions and superannuation savings. Further, due to the collapse of the second largest insurer in the country, the Australian insurance market was seriously affected. In an attempt to restore the industry to health, the Australian government announced a review5 and followed through on its recommendations for drastic reductions to company exposure to public liability claims. Public access to compensation through civil action against negligence by companies has decreased and in some cases, it has been completely eliminated.
I would like to extend grafeful thanks to Adam Sutton for his helpful ideas and comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
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Haines, F. (2007). Crime? What Crime? Tales of the Collapse of HIH. In: Pontell, H.N., Geis, G. (eds) International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34111-8_26
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