In European legal systems, a variety of approaches to trust and relationships of trust meet the universal professionalisation of asset management services. This book explores that interface in order ...to seek a better understanding of the legal regulation of the entrustment of wealth. Within the methodology of the Common Core of European Private Law, the book sets out cases on the establishment and termination of management relationships, obligations of loyalty and of professionalism, and the choice of law. More specialized cases address collective investment, collective secured lending, pension funds, and securitisation. Reports on these cases from fifteen jurisdictions of the European Union tackle fundamental problems of trust law and show which legal techniques are deployed to solve them across Europe. In addition to a much-needed comparative treatment of the subject, the book discusses the scholarly setting for the issues and gives guidance on the terminology in the evolving European scene.
Abstract
Trusts play important roles in the financial, estate, and tax plans of wealthy families. Evidence from US taxpayers indicates that the tax savings that they obtain from using trusts are ...rather modest, with one of the major tax benefits providing aggregate savings equal to just 0.05 per cent of the annual income of the top 0.01 per cent of US taxpayers. Trusts are primarily used to facilitate intergenerational and other transfers. Restrictions imposed by trusts can have the effect of preserving high levels of wealth and income, creating greater opportunities for governments to tax the rich.
We examine the effect of trust in venture capital. Our theory predicts a positive relationship of trust with investment, but a negative relationship with success. Using a hand-collected dataset of ...European venture capital deals, we find that the Eurobarometer measure of trust among nations positively predicts venture capital firms' investment decisions, but that it has a negative correlation with successful exits. Our theory also predicts that earlier stage investments require higher trust, that syndication is more valuable in low-trust situations, and that higher trust investors use more contingent contracts. The empirical evidence supports these predictions.
Constructive trusts significantly interfere with the rights of an apparent legal owner of property. This makes it necessary for their imposition to be properly explained and justified. Unfortunately, ...attempts to rationalise constructive trusts as a whole-as opposed to specific doctrines or particular aspects of constructive trusts-have been few and far between.Rationalising Constructive Trusts proposes a new structure for a coherent understanding of constructive trusts. By using a combination of conceptual tools, it provides answers to a number of crucial questions, for example: What are the ingredients of a constructive trust claim? What are the limits of constructive trusts? How can we rationalise the imposition of constructive trusts in particular situations? Why do judges exercise varying degrees of remedial discretion in different doctrines?From a wider perspective, the structured understanding helps us to appreciate the precise ambit and role of express, constructive, and resulting trusts.
Growing interest in non‐capitalist ownership models raises empirical questions about the political implications of such models. In this paper we ask: are non‐capitalist property ownership models ...inherently politically transformative? A study of community land trusts (CLTs) based in Minnesota illustrates that alternative property models do not necessarily produce transformative political outcomes. Interviews of those involved in CLTs revealed that they most often engage in affirmative politics, rather than challenging structural problems. Seeds of transformation were evident in these CLTs as well, however, and we explore these moments through four lenses of transformation in order to see the potential building blocks toward other worlds. To this end, we highlight changes in participant subjectivities, collective relationship building, the cultivation of community control, and the subversion of power hierarchies. While these moments offer pathways toward greater transformation, this study reveals the necessity of intentionally transformative practice in alternative ownership models.
A burgeoning literature demonstrates how the inter-dependent relationship between the financial and real estate sectors has intensified boom-bust dynamics within urban property markets. Indeed, ...following the financial crisis of 2008, this articulation of increased financial risk within cities has been evidenced in the avalanche of distressed property assets and debt that accompanied the collapse of property markets internationally. However, while research has focused on the causes of the crash and its economic, social and political impacts, knowledge is less developed regarding how the link between finance and the built environment is being re-established. How are the circuits of capital into distressed property markets being rebooted in post-crisis contexts and what are the implications for the existing political economy? In response, this article explores the development of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) market in Ireland as part of a wider effort to deleverage the country’s failed banking sector and to attract global, yield-seeking capital into the moribund property market. Despite their location at the nexus between financial and real estate markets, REITs have not figured highly in critical geographic discussion of the financialization of real estate. This article addresses this gap by contextualising the history, politics and geography of REITs and by stressing their urban dimensions, as well as demonstrating how they are capitalizing on the deleveraging of the Irish banking and development sectors in the interests of global financial investors.
Community land trusts (CLTs) are a unique model of shared equity homeownership that promote equitable development and empower homebuyers in historically exclusive real estate markets. As a timely ...study about the potential future governance around affordable housing, the multiple case studies here identify places that have both a CLT and land bank, and where nascent initiatives by local governments focused on creating permanent affordable housing are facilitating collaborations between local CLTs and land banks. By exploring the themes and dynamics of these emerging collaborations with qualitative methods, the authors evaluate how CLTs can leverage collaborations with land banks as a tool to scale up permanent affordable housing and community control. Understanding how CLTs may benefit from collaborations with land banks is timely considering the current affordable housing crisis and an increasingly widespread recognition of systemic inequitable access to property ownership.
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