Crime? What Crime? Tales of the Collapse of HIH

  • Fiona Haines
Chapter

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.

Keywords

World Trade Organization Corporate Crime Large Insurer Reinsurance Contract Comm Ission 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fiona Haines
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of CriminologyUniversity of MelbourneMelbourneAustralia

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