A Study On The Function Changes Of American Business Trust

American business trust is a typical form of private express trust applied in the commercial field,which is an unincorporated enterprise with dual advantages of trust and commercial organizations.Business trust was born in Massachusetts in the 19 th century,and was imitated by other states because of its outstanding advantages in attracting capital and its extreme flexibility.It became the main enterprise organization in the United States in the 19 th century and was widely used in the field of public undertakings.In the 20 th century,to respond to the needs of financial markets and to address the shortcomings of common law business trust,states had enacted business trust statute,to secure the advantages of business trust with the form of legislation.As a result,the business trust developed mutual funds,asset securitization and real estate investment trusts and other modern forms.Even after the liberalization and democratization of corporation,business trust was still active in the financial field.The trust industry in China developed out of commercial needs at the very beginning.A large number of trust products,trust plans and financial products are exactly business trust.In calls to speed up the transformation and to return to the origin of trust,this paper based on the function changes of American business trust,focusing on the 19th-20th’s social background,the system background and theoretical background,discussing why business trust broke through the original trajectory of trust and became a commercial organization with function of both profit and entity.In the introduction,this paper focuses on the research background,research status at home and abroad,research methods and ideas,systematically combs the concept of business trust,points out the difference between business trust and other related concepts,types and development periods of business trust.The first chapter reviews the origin and main principles of traditional trust and analyzes the advantages of traditional trust and main obstacles for commercial application.The second chapter analyzes the commercial function of business trust,starting from the first commercial transformation of trust in the United Kingdom,analyzing why the transformation of trust happened in the United States,and the significance of this transformation to trust theory and American society.The third chapter analyzes the entity function of business trust,starting from the uncertainty of common law business trust,combined with the social change and legal development of the 20 th century in the United States,discusses why trust has been changed into an independent legal entity,and the significance of this change to the development of trust theory and commercial law.In the conclusion part,the paper concludes the regular patterns in function changes of American business trust in foreign countries,and puts forward reasonable suggestions for the practice of Chinese business trust according to the reasons and process of the function transformation of business trust.