In the UK, its basically HMRC first, then banks/building societies. If there is anything left, everyone else gets a share. The last one my company dealt with,

In the UK, its basically HMRC first, then banks/building societies. If there is anything left, everyone else gets a share. The last one my company dealt with, we got about 10% of our exposure back. So we got £1,000 instead of the £10,000 that was owed. We then got to write that off as a loss. This monster is in a different league to anything I've dealt with but the principles here would largely be the same but with less transparency and more money wandering off for a chat with shady characters. I suspect that the rules I might follow may be joined by some rather more complicated ones, when the sums involved are large enough and the corporate structures are complicated enough.