Mr. Martin said he also had a working relationship with trustees at the City University of New York, talking occasionally with Herman Badillo, the chairman, and Benno C. Schmidt Jr., the vice chairman.
Because of this lack of a relationship, the trustees' powers are far wider-ranging, only being regulated by the Charity Commission and actions brought by the Attorney General; the beneficiaries have no direct control.
Since a school's board determines how much to pay their president, compensation is related to relationships between trustees and the leader, Ginsberg said.
The stakes are steep for defendants who roll the dice in bankruptcy court because of the often close relationship between the trustees charged with recovering money and the judges who appoint them, Newhouse said.
The regulatory scrutiny is bound to lead to an overhaul of industry practices, including more transparency in fees and more of an arm's length relationship between fund trustees and fund managers.
Dr. Cross, who could not be reached for comment for the article, has since said that she resigned not because of the college's use of the $8 million but because of her fractured relationship with the trustees.
In one sign of the close relationship between the trustees and Mr. Bulger, his spokesman, Robert Connolly, was in the meeting room almost as soon as the session ended, handing out a statement from Mr. Bulger, thanking the trustees for supporting him.
Within English trusts law, a standard express trust has a relationship between the trustees and the beneficiaries; this does not apply to charitable trusts, partially because of the special definition of trustee used and partially because there are no individual beneficiaries identified in a charitable trust.
Krystal Woodbridge is a sexual and relationship therapist and trustee of the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists.
Such filings, for instance, would not disclose relationships between sole trustees and organizations receiving grants from the institutions they control.
