The Research On The Trustee’’s Duty Of Prudent Investment

This dissertation mainly studies the trustee’s duty of prudent investment. It starts from the problems on the trustee’s duty of prudent investment of what we have, and then analyses the development and evolution of prudent investment duty in the law of both Anglo-American law system and Civil law system to indicate its advantages and disadvantages. After further describing the trustee’s liability for breach of trust to integrate the system of this duty, this paper puts forward some propositions about consummating this duty of prudent investment.Chapter one analyzes the “Learoyd v. Whiteley Case”, and then derives the problems of lacking relative regulations on the trustee’s duty of prudent investment.Chapter two illustrates the basic interpretation of the trustee’s duty of prudent investment. It absorbs the general ideas of the trustee and his duty, and then indicates the basis of the prudent investment duty, such as transaction cost theory and the principle of good faith.Chapter three researches trustee’s duty of prudent investment through comparative perspective. Firstly it illustrates the development and evolution of prudent investment duty in Anglo-American law system, and then absorbs the deduction of this duty in Civil law system. The trustee’s duty of prudent investment belongs to the duty of bona fide administrators’ care in Civil law system, it adopts the principle regulations about the duty of bona fide administrators’ care in Civil law, its contents are so abstract that it doesn’t have a specific judging standard and can’t be precisely used in the juridical practice. And then it indicates that the duty of bona fide administrators’ care should be classified by two accurate duties, they are: the duty to act personally, the duty to administer their own property and the trust property respectively.Chapter four studies the trustee’s liability for violating the duty of prudent investment. It analyzes the principle of this liability for breach of the duty, and identifies this kind of liability as act of tort. And then this paper holds the idea that the trustee’s liability for violating trust to the beneficiary is limited to the trust property, while the liability to the third party is infinite.Chapter five indicates the propositions of consummating the trustee’s duty of prudent investment, and further points out that not only should we perfect its own regulations, but also improve the coordinated sets of measures about this duty.