known as the "floating charge". The first recorded English case where a floating charge was recognised was Re Panama, New Zealand, and Australian Royal Mail Co (1870) 5 Ch App 318. The Court of Appeal held that the effect of the document was that the secured creditor could not interfere with the running of the business and its dealings with its own assets until the winding up of the company, but the occurrence of that event entitled the secured creditor to realise its security over the assets and to assert its charge in priority to the general body of creditors. The use of such floating charges increased in popularity and expanded rapidly until, as Lord Walker described it: "The floating charge had become a cuckoo in the nest of corporate insolvency." Criticism of the effect of floating charges grew, until Lord Macnaghten finally proclaimed in : This led to a push back against the effect of floating charges in the form of the Preferential Payments in Bankruptcy Amendment Act 1897. Definition "A floating security is an equitable charge on the assets for the time being of a going concern. It attaches to the subject charged in the varying condition in which it happens to be from time to time. It is the essence of such a charge that it remains dormant until the undertaking ceases to be a going concern, or until the person in whose favour the charge is created intervenes. His right to intervene may of course be suspended by agreement. But if there is no agreement for suspension, he may exercise his right whenever he pleases after default." Later in Illingworth v Houldsworth [1904] AC 355 at 358 he stated: "...a floating charge is ambulatory and shifting in nature, hovering over and so to speak floating with the property which it is intended to affect until some event occurs or some act is done which causes it to settle and fasten on the subject of the charge within its reach and grasp." A description was subsequently given in Re Yorkshire Woolcombers Association [1903] 2 Ch 284, and despite Romer LJ clearly stating in that case that he did not intend to give a definition of the term floating charge, his description is generally cited as the most authoritative definition of what a floating charge is: it is a charge over a class of assets present and future;