CO129-389 - Governor Sir Lugard Acting Governor Claud Severn - 1912 [3-4] — Page 437

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cio P Y.

Hon. Colonial Secretary,

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RECO We have by the recent Companies Ordinance

LEGE 27 MAY 12 (No. 58 of 1911), as the Secretary of State points out in his letter of 15th. February, 1912, to the Board of Trade, expressly legislated for "Shanghai Companies" by making that Ordinance

applicable to every company registered here "notwithstanding that the whole or part of its business is carried on elsewhere (section 1 (2). ). In regard to the proposed Order-in-Council, which the Secretary of State refers, I have been, and em, in

correspondence with Sir Havilland de Sausmarez in relation to its

terms and have suggested as regards the future powers of the Shanghai Courts that their control over companies having local registers in China may be strengthened by amendments to our

Ordinance (section 35) under which local registers would only be

permitted to those companies whose officers (or a certain number

or proportion of whose officers) were British. In this suggestion

I believe Sir Havilland concurs.

We are empowered by section 735 of the Ker-

-chant Shipping Act to repeal but not to amend any portion of

that Act and we have already exercised such power in section 41

of the Lerchant Shipping Ordinance 1899 (Ordinance 10 of 1899).

I have conferred with the Registrar Supreme

Court on the subject and we think that the questions raised may

be settled by passing an Ordinance here repealing the words "and having their principal place of business in those dominions" in

section 1 (d) of the Act and then re-enacting them in the Ordi-

such -nance with an alternative either of some,

e/qualifications as I

have indicated above or on the lines referred to in paragraph 3

of the Board of Trade's memorandum.

Such an amending Ordinance should we think

await the final settlement of the Order-in-Council now under

consideration.

16th. April, 1912.

(Sd.) W. Rees Davies.