Ownership of Assets in Chinese Shipping Funds

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations for submitting a conceptual paper on the ownership structure of the trust property under the shipping fund in China. The paper can be improved by providing recommendations on the mechanism, rules, and regulations to enable the transfer of ownership of trust property under the shipping fund from the client to the trustee. Introducing foreign practical experience and legislation may be insufficient without awareness on the necessity of the regulatory changes among the authorities and industry players.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments. 

As per the suggestions of Reviewer 1, we have included new text (lines 77-122) and schemes that illustrate dominant schemes in the market as well as contrast the Chinese with the European financial schemes (funds); we also explain the issue of transferring. As stated in the text, ownership can remain in a special legal conduit owned by the fund, yet a bareboat (most commonly) or a leasing (expected more in the future, as it is an off-balance sheet solution) scheme can pass the operational control of the vessel to the beneficiary (strategic investor) owner/operator. 

We have also improved the use of English and the expressions in the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The objectives, the premises, and what the authors want to show are not clear. A profound rethinking of the article is necessary, which is very confusing.

It is necessary to clarify the starting point, the authors' proposals, the objectives to be achieved and the conclusions

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments. 

As per the suggestions of Reviewer 2, we have:

revised the introduction (section 1); included new text (lines 77-122) and schemes that illustrate dominant schemes in the market as well as contrast the Chinese with the European financial schemes (funds); we also explain the issue of transferring. As stated in the text, ownership can remain in a special legal conduit owned by the fund, yet a bareboat (most commonly) or a leasing (expected more in the future, as it is an off-balance sheet solution) scheme can pass the operational control of the vessel to the beneficiary (strategic investor) owner/operator. revised Section 2 on the Ownership by braking down the content in smaller paragraphs  introducing text (lines 195-265) revised Section 3 that summaries the grounds of transferring under general provisos of the Chinese law revised conclusions, identifying fields that need further research.

Moreover we have improved the use of English and expressions in the text.

We would like to thank you for your constructive criticism and we hope that we have addressed all issues.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The text is now more understandable and the objectives are clearer.