The Gauteng Division’s newly established dedicated insolvency court heard a series of unopposed liquidation and sequestration applications during its first pilot week in May 2025. These included applications for compulsory winding-up of companies and sequestration of individuals, as well as a business rescue practitioner’s application to discontinue business rescue and place a company into liquidation. Across multiple matters, the court identified widespread non-compliance with statutory notice requirements under the Companies Act 1973 and the Insolvency Act 1936, particularly the failure to give effective notice of proceedings to employees, registered trade unions, SARS, and in some instances respondents themselves. Many applications relied mechanically on sheriff’s returns of service that did not establish that the applications were reasonably likely to come to the attention of employees or respondents. In several matters, further substantive defects were present, including reliance on stale or unproven statutory demands, inadequate proof of acts of insolvency, outdated financial information, failure to serve amended papers, excessive delays between launching and serving applications, and even the launching of liquidation proceedings against a company that had already been deregistered. As a result, the court was required to remove most matters from the roll and dismiss one application outright.