Charter Broker Research, Practice And Legal System

On the international shipping market, shipbrokers actively conduct various intermediary activities between ship owners and charterers. They play an extremely vital role as providing the specialized consultation opinion, transmitting chartering information, completing the transaction smoothly, and facilitating the conclusion of chartering contracts. The Anglo-American law countries have a fairly dominating position on the international shipping market and shipbrokers in these countries have developed earlier. The researches on the shipbrokers' rights and obligations in such countries are more mature and well-developed. This subject, however, has been received comparatively little attention from lawmakers and scholars in our country.This dissertation aims to expatiate some problems in the practice, especially in the fields of the shipping brokers' rights and obligations. Through this way, the legal status of shipbrokers must be made clear before researching their rights and obligations. In Chapter One, starting from the relevant concept, the author compared the different stipulations on the intermediary's classification and the agent theory in both the Anglo-American law and the continental law systems, evaluate several theories of shipbroker legal status, especially in the field of the shipbrokers' rights and duties, then the author tried to conclude some drawbacks in the Shipbroker Law System in China.In following Chapter Two, the author creatively applied the relevant economic theory to analyze the premise and significance of shipbroker. In the last half of the Chapter, the shipbrokers' working principals, practical functions and how to choose an eligible shipbroker have been argued fully and deeply. Combined with the internship in a shipbroker company, the author put forward some unique views and suggestions.Since the Intermediary Contract in the PRC Contract Law has few stipulations on intermediary's rights and obligations and the researches in this field are also rare. As a result, there are few stipulations on the rights and obligations of shipbrokers who worked as intermediaries. The relevant rules and cases are eurychoric in different codes and books. Thinking of the ship broking is a new industry in China. So in Chapter Three, the author use the comparative law to research the international customs and case law in Anglo-American law countries, and compared with relevant stipulations about contracts of intermediary in our country (the right to the commission etc), the author tried to find if any explicit ways that can be used for reference in our law system.Come back to the purpose of drawing this dissertation "How to consummate the current shipping broker's law system and how to resolve the problems in practice." Concerning the mentioned questions, in last Chapter, the author proposed certain legislative and industrial suggestions for improving our country shipbrokers' law system on basis of analyzing the backgrounds and status quo of the recent shipping circle.