COPY.
4
411
Board of Trade,
55, Whitehall,
S.W.
18th January 1915.
My dear Hurst,
I am extremely sorry that I have not been able
to send these papers back to you before.
The two points raised in your letter were:-
(1) How to deal with companies limited by
guarantee, with or without a share capital, the
operations of which are directed and controlled
in China.
(2) A new term for Hong Kong company.
I am afraid that I cannot improve on the
suggestion which has been made to substitute "Hong
Kong China Company" for "Hong Kong Company".
With regard to (1), companies limited by guarantee with a share capital ought to be dealt with in some way, for although these companies are not
common here at the present time they could easily be constituted so as to be little different for practical purposes from a company limited by shares.
In practice, the liability under the guarantee of the members of a company limited by guarantee is
usually limited to quite a modest amount. The amount
collected under the guarantee is not as a rule of very
much use for the payment of the debts of the company,
so that the difficulty with regard to foreign
contributories would probably not be of very great importance, although it is of course possible that
companies