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Abstract: In secured transactions law, movable property includes inventory, accounts receivable, bank deposits, intellectual property rights, equipment, stocks, securities and virtually any other right that has economic value to its legal holder. A legal system which facilitates the use of movable property to guaranty loans, while allowing the debtor to possess and utilize such property in the normal course of its business, will help create a credit market that provides maximum amounts of credit at the lowest rates. An enforceable security interest in movable collateral, prior to all other claims in those assets, requires two essential elements: (1) it must be a valid obligation between creditor and debtor and (2) the creditor must give the world notice of its interest in debtor’s assets to establish its priority.
This article compares the way the creation and notice of security interests in movable property have been handled in three different pieces of legislation: the Uniform Commercial Code of the U.S., the Model Inter-American Law on Secured Transaction ratified in 2002 by the Organization of American States, and the Mexican Law of 23 May 2000. The European-Civil-Law-based systems of Latin America value formality and fear fraud by parties to a degree difficult to safeguard if they accept all the premises of the UCC and the Model Law. This article attempts to identify and explain points of conflict, and also reconcile them so that modern security interests might be constituted and declared in ways satisfactory to and effective within existing Latin American systems. (excerpts from article, edited)
Keywords: security interest, secured transactions, uniform commercial code
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