Ten firms did what it took thirty-two practitioners to do.

In July, 1,049 companies entered a new distress episode on ASIC's published notices. Measured by individual, the market is close to flat. The most active practitioner in the country was named across 30 of those companies, which is under three percent of the month. Of the 363 external administrators who appeared at all, 102 appeared exactly once. The median was named across two.

Measured by firm, the same month looks nothing like that. Ten brands hold 404 of those companies between them, thirty-nine percent, and it takes the thirty-two most active individuals to reach the same number. Worrells alone accounts for 97 companies. Mackay Goodwin accounts for 61. Those two carry fifteen percent of the month between them.

What builds that scale is not what the shape suggests. Seven of the top ten firms show a companies-to-filings ratio of exactly 1.00: every company arrived as its own separate filing, one referral at a time. Worrells sits at 1.01 across 96 filings. Rodgers Reidy sits at 1.10. Only McGrathNicol breaks the pattern, its 34 companies arriving through 10 filings at a ratio of 3.40.

So scale here is not won on the large multi-company filings. It is won one file at a time, and one firm in the top ten is playing a different game.

Companies are distinct company episodes. Filings are distinct notices. A notice naming fifteen companies is fifteen companies and one filing. Where two practitioners at one firm are appointed to the same company, that company counts once for the firm.

1,025 of the month's 1,049 company episodes resolve to a firm, spread across 134 brands. The remaining 24 carry no firm on any appointee and are excluded from firm figures but counted everywhere else.

This table counts trading brands as the market encounters them and does not attempt corporate ownership consolidation. That distinction carries real weight in this profession. Several of the brands above state on their own materials that they are groups of independently owned member firms rather than single partnerships, Worrells, Rodgers Reidy and Hall Chadwick among them, so the offices behind one name may share no ownership or liability at all. They are counted together because that is the name the notice carries and the name the market uses. The same test runs the other way. Where a firm publicly presents a differently named business as its own division, the two count as one: Jirsch Sutherland's figure includes WA Insolvency Solutions, which both firms describe as a division of Jirsch Sutherland following a merger in 2014. The test in both directions is what the firms themselves say in public. The table never infers a relationship neither party states.

A firm's company count on its own says almost nothing about the practice behind it. The second column is where the difference sits.

At one end, a company arrives as its own filing. Someone chose that firm for that matter: a bank, an accountant, a solicitor, a director. Volume there measures how widely a firm is being sent work, and seven of the ten sit exactly there.

At the other, several companies are named on one notice and are run as a single matter. Volume there measures capacity to take that on. In July that describes exactly one firm in the table.

The month's largest single filing named fifteen companies at once. The second named twelve companies entering administration on one day. Two filings, twenty-seven companies, and the whole reason a single-column table would mislead you.

The concentration stops at the firm door. Inside it, the work is spread across 363 people, and the individuals appointed across the most companies look like this.

Tenth place is shared. Amanda Lott and Antony Resnick finished level on both measures, and where the counts cannot separate two practitioners, this table does not.

Those eleven hold 203 of the month's 1,049 companies, about nineteen percent. The other eighty-one percent went to 352 other people.

Each of these leads its category with a clear margin over the next practitioner.

Neither is one, and neither could be.

Insolvency work arrives by referral. A bank calls someone it has used before. An accountant sends a client down the hall. A director rings the person who handled their mate's business. Volume follows those relationships and the size of the firm standing behind them, and neither of those things is visible in a notice.

So these tables can see where the work landed. They cannot see how well any of it was done, what came back to creditors, or how hard the job was. They describe the shape of a practice, not the standard of it, and nobody should read a position here as a verdict on anybody.

The two tables point in opposite directions, and both are useful.

Ten firm names cover thirty-nine percent of the month, so a watch list of firms is worth building and will keep paying. Three hundred and sixty-three practitioner names cover the same month, and no watch list of people survives contact with that tail. If you are deciding where to spend attention, the firm is the durable unit and the individual is not.

Neither answers the question you actually have. Knowing a file sits with Worrells does not tell you whether it is your customer, and the practitioner who answers your proof of debt in September is, on these numbers, someone you have not dealt with before. The only thing that connects a notice to your ledger is the ACN.

Route on the identifier. Track the firms. Do not try to track the people.

If you would rather have the whole month resolved than reconcile it yourself, that is the Ledger File: every appointment with its ACN, trading and former names, process type, practitioner, firm and notice date, shipped weekly.

Everything above comes from ASIC's published insolvency notices for 1 to 31 July 2026, captured and reconciled every day as they appeared. Every figure counts newly published distress entries. A company appears in July because its notice was published in July, not because anything necessarily happened to it that month.

A company counts once per new distress episode, however many notices that episode threw off, and once per firm however many of that firm's practitioners were appointed to it. A filing is a distinct notice, which is why a notice naming fifteen companies is fifteen companies and one filing. The same month generates a larger practitioner figure, 1,313 appointment credits, because joint appointees each receive one.

Practitioner names are resolved to one identity, so "Geoff Granger" and "Geoffrey Peter Granger" are the same person rather than two entries. Firms are resolved to one public brand, so a firm's state offices and service entities count together under the name the market uses, whether or not those offices share ownership. Both kinds of merge are made only where documents support them, and each is recorded against the person who approved it.

A distinction is published only where the leader's figure is higher than the next practitioner's. Where two people reach the same number, it stays a tie.

Counts describe appointments on the public record. They do not measure fees, complexity, outcomes or quality. Busy is busy.

If our count differs from your own records, tell us and we will correct it in print.

Source: ASIC published notices, © Australian Securities & Investments Commission, CC BY 4.0.