Study Of Ship Finance Leases A Number Of Legal Issues

With nowadays' economic globalization, shipping industry develops rapidly. But ships are one of the huge-cost transportations, so huge risks exist in the process of manufacture and operation of ships. Finance lease has been widely adopted in ship financing field since its commencement in 1950s' in United States, and it has also been gradually accepted by China. Even though, our country is still at the very beginning stage on the study of leasing in ship financing, because of the complexity of this kind of transaction and the specialty of ships as subject matter. There are a lot of academic disputes over the definition, legal nature, legal relations and the registration system of leasing in ship financing.The thesis tries to study several legal issues thereof, while the author collected and read many cases and related materials. And it also comes up with several solutions according to present legislative situation on the issue of registration system of leasing in ship financing.The first part of this thesis discusses the definition and different forms of leasing in ship financing, especially the difference of it from other ship financing types and other kinds of ship leasing. And it draws the conclusion that the essential character of leasing in ship financing is that it involves three parties and two contracts, and it takes ship leasing as its form while financing is its nature. The legal nature of finance lease is also analyzed in this part.In part two, on the issue whether the lease right is creditor's right or real right, the author analyzes it according to traditional civil law theory and points out that the lease right in the transaction of leasing in ship financing belongs to creditor's right but it has more characteristics of real right than general lease right.An extensive discussion about the legal relations of leasing in ship financing contract is made in part three. At first the thesis analyzes the applying law thereof from both international convention and national civil and commercial law angels. Then, it also discusses in details the three parties of such contract, so to make it clear the difference of leasing in ship financing from other kinds of operation lease. The effects of such contract are also discussed in this chapter and the author wish to give some constructive suggestion to the practice of this kind of transaction through this thesis.The last part points out the present situation of ship's registration system in our country, and discusses the importance of setting up special registration system for leasing in ship financing. At the end, the thesis puts forward several advisable measures to our future legislative revision.