No. 4.
103 (63) -
HONGKONG.
REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
STANDING LAW COMMITTEE
on the
COMPANIES BILL, 1911.
No. 18
• 1911
Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor, November 23rd, 1911.
PRESENT:
The Honourable the Attorney General, (C. G. ALABASTER), Chairman.
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the Captain Superintendent of Police, (F. W. LYONS).
Dr. Ho KAI, M.B., C.M.G.
""
Mr. H. E. POLLOCK, K.C.
Mr. E. A. HEWETT.
A Bill entitled "An Ordinance to consolidate and amend the Ordinance relating to Companies" was referred to the Standing Law Committee after the second reading.
The Bill has been considered clause by clause in the presence of never less than four members of the Committee, who have held several meetings to discuss it.
The Committee suggest au alteration in the title and a number of alterations in the body of the Bill. For convenience of report a copy of the Bill is attached shewing in italics the words and figures which the Standing Law Committee desire to be inserted and in square brackets the words and figures which they desire to see deleted. The Committee have also renumbered the subsequent sections in consequence of the proposed introduction of the nev section 77. Most of the amendments are self-explanatory; but a few call for special remark. Thus it will be noticed that a second sub-section is suggested to section 1. This will remove any doubts that may have been engendered in the Colony and along the China Coast by the judgment in the Dallas Horse Repository Company case (5 HKLR 194), as to the status of the so called "Shanghai" companies, which are registered in Hongkong, but which do not carry on business there.
Section 2 has also been amended. The corresponding sections of the Imperial Act. (8 Ed. 7 c. 69 s. 1) and of the Straits Settlements Ordinance (No. 5 of 1889 s. 4) limit. unregistered banking partnerships to ten persons. The Secretary of State, the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and the Board of Trade who were specially consulted, as banking companies have not hitherto come within the scope of the Colony's Companies Ordinances, were at first desirous that the Bill should be uniform with the Imperial Act and the Straits Settlements Ordinance in this respect, but when it was represented to the Board of Trade that local conditions with regard to the incorporation of Chinese banks did not make such uniformity desirable the suggestion was not pressed. The Committee therefore suggest an amendment which gives banking partnerships the same numerical limit as other partnerships which have for their object the acquisition of gain, namely twenty. By amalgamating the sub-sections of section 2 the Committee have however in other respects followed the precedent of the Straits Settlements Ordinance.