신탁법제와 유동화법제 관련 최근 쟁점 기업분할과 자본조달 수단으로서의 사업신탁의 설립과 상장 -싱가폴과 홍콩의 경험을 중심으로- = The Formation and Listing of a Business Trust as Means of Spining off and Raising New Capital

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Korean Trust Act amended in 2011 has expressly confirmed that a business division can be transferred as a whole on trust to its trustee. The Act also introduced a new category of a limited liability trust that can be differentiated from orthodox trusts in two points: Firstly, it can register on its own name rather than its trustee’s, and secondly it can make the trustee’s liability limited to the extent of the amount of the trust property. The combined effect of the two parts seems to make possible to form an American or Singapore style business trust. This articles explores the potential for the Korean business trust regime to develop. In doing so the article makes more focus on the structure and characteristics of the Singapore business trust which is gaining increasing popularity in recent years. The trust scheme provides both sponsoring entities and investors respective incentives to participate in the arrangement. From the sponsoring entities’ perspective, it provides them a form of financing of their high value assets and at the same time is able to generate a stable income for the sponsoring entity through control of the trustee-manager company. Secondly, the sponsoring entity may continue to control the sold property through the trustee-manager, and prevent the manager from being removed if it retains 25 per cent plus one of the units. From the investors’ perspective, the Singapore business trust provides them with the opportunity to invest in high value assets such as ships and infrastructure projects. It also allows the trust to pay returns to the unit holders from its cash profits rather than accounting profits that a company is supposed to find to pay dividends. However, the difficulty in changing the trustee-manager, and high performance fees paid to the trustee-manager may act as a disincentive for investors.