ત
Lin
LAK.
comf
4.
Comments on acquisition of immorable property by
foreign comporations
Library (Legal)
Can you
trace any special legislation being in this ponit in other Colones, preme;
4/9.
a
Under sec.320 (1)(c) of the Hong Kong Companies Ordinance, foreign company must obtain the special consent of the Governor in Council before it can hold immovable property in the Colony. Apparently the giving of consent in the past has been largely a formality and as a result foreign corporations have become owners of large blocks of property in various parts of the urban area. The Executive Council are now getting nervous and want the whole question considered.
The section of the Hong Kong Companies Ordinance referred to was no doubt designed to prevent any considerable alienation of land to foreign companies, or at any rate to act as a brake on such alienation. The fact however that the granting or withholding of consent rested in the discretion of the Governor in Council, and that the principle to be followed in dealing with applications was not precisely laid down by law has probably made it exceedingly difficult for the Governor in Council to withhold consent.
The Governor in Council now wishes apparently to be divested of his discretionary powers and presumably wants a law passed defining precisely the principle on which immovable property may be granted to foreign companies in order that reference could be made to it whenever it was desired to turn down an application. The difficulty is that most colonies etc follow the English law on the subject i.e. a licence/mortmain must be obtained before a foreign company can hold land. This, I take it is what sec.320(1)(c) of the Hong Kong Companies Ordinance really amounts to.
In the colonies the position is as outlined in the accompanying statement which I prepared last year in another con- nection.
I attach a copy of the Aliens (Land holding) Ordinance of Trinidad (Cap.240) which is representative of the restrictive legislation on the subject in force in a number of the W. Indian colonies. It might be useful to Hong Kong.
J.H.
619
This memorandum will be useful to the Hong KongGovernment, but can we add anything as regards the suggestion in paragraph 4 of the despatch? It would clearly be a hardship on the many thousand Chinese owners of property to place an embargo on their liberty to transfer their properties to other non-British Chine
persor