| Trust is a great creation of British Equity. Modern trust industry based on the legal system of trust has been widespread in the world today. Trust and the banking, insurance, securities, constitute the four pillars of the financial industry.In trust, the trustee hold the trust property in the name of the owner and have relatively independent rights of the management of trust property, which inheres a greater risk which is that trustee will misappropriate the rights to seek personal interests. To address this systemic risk, trust law provided the duty of loyalty, the principle of which is the strict"sole interest rule". Under the sole rule, a trustee shall administer the trust solely in the interests of the beneficiaries and couldn't place the trustee's own interests over those of the beneficiaries. It is no exaggeration to say that the duty of loyalty is a safety valve of trust, which is of very important position and role, and to which is referred as "the essential principle of trust fiduciary law". The duty of loyalty to which the party of trust industry must obey plays a very important role in regulating the industry order and protecting the interests of the beneficiary. Therefore, to research the duty of loyalty is of great significance.Although originated in Britain, trust industry in the United States has achieved great success and prosperity and has become the model of the world, characterized by rapid development, large-scale, rich trust products and etc. In more than 100 years of the development of trust industry in the United States, the duty of loyalty has persisted in the strict sole interest rule, which prohibits trustee from seeking personal interests in trust management with only a few exceptions. But at the beginning of 21st century, new trends of law and theory of the duty of loyalty has emerged. On one hand, many exceptions were provided in "Uniform Trust Code"(2000). And on the other hand, new thesis, which advocates turning the sole interest rule to"best interests rule", has attracted wide attention in the United States. In our opinion, the development and changes of the duty of loyalty are closely related to the development of the trust industry in the United States.Trust industry in China is characterized by shorter development time, smaller scale and lower competitiveness. With the "Trust Law" and other relevant laws and regulations, the duty of loyalty has established in China. But there are certain flaws, which relates to the problems of the trust industry in China. Therefore, our law needs to be improved. But there are some problems. On the one hand, trust and trust industry is products of British and American legal system, so that introduction and improvement should be based on deep research on foreign industrial development and the law. But on the other hand, there is little research on the duty of loyalty in the perspective of British and American law.In order to solve the problems above, in this paper, the basic issues of duty of loyalty is researched mainly according to American law and theory. Also, summary and research on basic norms, newest law and theory of American is given. And the interaction between changes of American trust industry and development of the duty of loyalty is made in this paper. Then, according to Chinese law the duty of loyalty is summarized. On this basis, a detailed comparative study of Sino-US loyalty duty norms is made. From the study, the main problems of Chinese law are identified,and then the improved methods are given.The main conclusion of this paper is that the duty of loyalty in Chinese law should introduce the strict sole interest rule.
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