A Study On Legal Issues Of Ship Financial Leasing

Ship financial lease is a new type of financing which focuses on both capital and ship. Because of the specificity of the object, the ship, under the ship financing lease relationship which shall be subject both to maritime law and financing lease law, the legal relationships amongst the parties thereto are more complicated than normal financing lease. The current maritime laws and regulations of China has no applicable rules and provisions on ship financing lease and the management of financing lease under financing laws is disorganized by want of a uniformed legislation. This article mainly discusses the outlines of ship financial lease, the specificity of applicable laws, the registry system for ship financial lease, other country's legislations and related suggestions.In the first chapter, the author mainly discusses the basic concept of shipping financial lease, characteristics, classification, and the current situation of shipping financial business. The purpose of this chapter is to give a general introduction of shipping financial lease.The second chapter is based on the specificity of shipping finance lease. the author mainly discusses the differences between the contract of shipping financial lease and the contract of bareboat charter, the features of ship finance leasing, the features of rights and obligations of parties thereto, the particular risks of the ship financial lease of the lessor.The author discusses the shipping financial lease registry in chapter three. Ship financial lease is different from bareboat chart, however, no state has established a ship financial lease registry system. In this chapter the author tries to prove the importance of the shipping financial lease registry and makes some proposal through the analysis of the necessity and the feasibility of shipping financial lease registry.In the forth chapter, the author introduces the legislations of ship financial lease in other states including the United States, Russia, Germany and the relevant international conventions on ship financing leases. The author discusses our current regulations on shipping financial lease and makes the comparative analysis between the relevant legislation of other states and China.In the fifth chapter, the author discusses the existing problems both in theory and practice, such as lacking of legislations on ship financial lease, related policies and regulations remaining disorganized and the disorder of the management carried out by several authorities, which seriously hindered the development of financial leasing industry. In this regard, the author gives some suggestions on perfecting ship financial lease legislations of maritime law and financing law and on strengthening national policies to support ship financing. By taking the experience of ship financial lease legislations and managements of developed states as reference, the author puts forward a proposal on the perfecting of ship financial lease legislations and management of China.