Trust-owned companies and the irreducible core of the trust

Abstract

The recent Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal case of Zhang Hong Li v DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd upheld the effectiveness of anti-Bartlett clauses. This gives rise to the question of whether a trust-corporate structure, coupled with a well-drafted anti-Bartlett clause, leaves any room for trust obligations. Through the lens of the law on trust-owned companies, this article thus seeks to reconceptualise the ‘irreducible core of trust obligations’. It argues that the irreducible core means the minimum duties which are necessary to preserve the integrity of the trust concept. It draws a distinction between core and mandatory duties, in that the ‘bells and whistles’ one adds in specific contexts may be mandatory duties reflecting appropriate policies, instead of core duties necessary for a trust to exist. It accordingly considers the proper content of the irreducible core, as distinguished from other mandatory duties.

Advancing the student‐oriented model of academic publishing: The case of legal studies in Hong Kong

“…In fact, in response to the limited, infrequent, and passive avenues in legal academic publishing in Hong Kong, student authors in Hong Kong have gradually turned to overseas law journals to publish their articles, and have obtained relative success. There is a significant increase in the number of articles published in overseas journals that are solely or jointly authored by Hong Kong law students in the recent years, with at least 15 articles over the three‐year period of 2019–2021: recent examples in well‐known legal journals include the Law Quarterly Review (e.g., Sin, 2021), Statute Law Review (eg Lui, 2021), Trusts and Trustees (e.g., Fee, 2020; Lam, 2021), and so on. Many of these articles (including all the examples cited above) relate to legal issues within Hong Kong.…”