Trading trust

A trading trust is generally a discretionary trust, whose trustee is a company, that is used to trade for the benefit of the trustees. As with a normal trust, a trading trust separates legal ownership of assets from beneficial ownership of the assets and the trustee actually holds all trust assets on trust for another person, and under a trading trust this is often the actual owners of the business and their family.

A trust isn’t an entity (because it is a relationship) but it can nevertheless become a vehicle for conducting a business and it may be useful for asset protection and confidentiality. Trusts also have benefits that include taxation flexibility and control without ownership.