ABSTRACT
In JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank v Pugachev [2017] EWHC 2426 (Ch), Birss J, as he then was, held that certain trusts which conferred wide powers on the settlor were in substance nothing more than bare trusts. This meant that judgment creditors of the settlor could enforce against the trust assets. Despite initial excitement among trusts and civil fraud practitioners, Birss J’s ‘bare trust’ analysis has not been widely adopted in subsequent cases. Five years on, the policy considerations underpinning the decision in Pugachev are as easy to understand as ever, but what of the legal reasoning? Was Birss J right to say that the trusts were bare trusts? Could a better way of making the trust assets available to the settlor’s creditors have been found?
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Paul Adams, Pugachev five years on: were the trusts really bare trusts?, Trusts and Trustees, https://doi.org/10.1093/tandt/ttac021. Published 17 March.
First posted 2022-03-21 16:00:01
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