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Sir A. Grattan-Bellew, Legal Adviser
Hong Kong Dollar Bonds
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I should be grateful for your advice on the question raised in the last paragraph of the attached letter of 28 November from the Bank of England
The issue is as
6/ (Turner) to the Treasury (Hay).
16/12
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1673.
RECEIVED IN
ARCHIVES No.31
1 3DEC 1968
HKICS
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2. Earlier this year, by an exchange of despatches dated 30 May and 21 June from the Commonwealth Secretary and 13 July from the Governor of Hong Kong, we concluded an Agreement concerning Hong Kong $ Bonds; the details of the Agreement are not relevant to the present issue. In July we opened negotiations for a new Agreement. This was agreed in outline by an Agreed Minute signed on 25July, and finally concluded by an exchange of despatches dated 20 September and 9 October, which provided the new Agreement should enter into force on 25 September, 1968, and remain in force for a period of 5 years. The interim period between the signature of the Agreed Minute and the entry into force of the new Agreement was covered by arrangements set out in a dispatch of 9 September, acknowledged by the Governor in his dispatch No. 1213 of 19 September.
3.
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of thesedĹspatch « explicitly provided for the termination of the original Hong Kong Bond Agreement. The two questions, on which I should be grateful for your views, are:
a)
whether paragraph 8 of the despatch of 9 September could be held to have implicitly terminated the earlier agreements at the time of the entry into force of the new Agreement;
if this is not the case,
b)
whether there is a legal reason to make it desirable to have a formal "tidying up" termination now, given that:
1)
2)
the period of the Bond Agreement theore- tically out-runs that of the new Agreement (unless renewed) by nearly two years. On the other hand neither Government is likely to wish to revive the Bond arrangement and the Government of Hong Kong is explicitly debarred from doing so without the agreement of H.M.G. by
virtue of paragraph 4 of the dispatch of 9 September.
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(P. C. PETRIE
10 December. 1968
c.c. Mr. Christofas, Rm.112, Matthew Parker Street
Hong Kong Department
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