CO129-426 - Public Offices - 1915 — Page 416

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