Business is humming for insolvency experts who say a surge in receiverships and liquidations is coming close to levels last seen in the late 1980s.

But BDO Spicers’ partner Stephen Tubbs says the issues for today’s troubled companies are quite different from the problems of 1987.

“A lot of the issues at the moment basically involve the consequences of easy credit,” he says. “Most of the excesses that have been entered into [by companies] have been brought into sharp focus as the banks are basically reining things in.”

Statistics from the Insolvency and Trustee Service show that insolvencies have been rising for the last five years, although the introduction of new classes of insolvency has dropped the figure for bankruptcies in the last year.

Bankruptcies have been rising since the 2003-2004 financial year, but the introduction of the new classes of No Asset Procedure and Summary Instalment Order last year means you can’t strictly compare apples with apples.