XN000022-1997-01-31 — Page 5

4.

New bilingual forms for supplying information to registry

The Registrar of Companies, Mr Gordon Jones, announced today (Friday) that, as from February 10, presentors may submit documents to the Companies Registry in either English or Chinese.

To assist presentors, the registry has designed 11 new bilingual forms which may be used for supplying the most frequently used information to the Registry.

"With the Companies Ordinance and the relevant subsidiary legislation duly translated into Chinese and authenticated by the Legislative Council, the Companies Registry is now in a position to accept documents in either English or Chinese," Mr Jones said.

"Having been authorised under the Companies (Amendment) Ordinance 1997, which was enacted on January 8, 1997, to specify forms under the Companies Ordinance, we have re-designed all the important forms, to make them bilingual and more user-friendly."

The new forms, 11 in number, include annual returns, forms for notification of appointment of directors and secretaries and changes in their particulars, notification of address of registered office, notification of mortgage or charges details, registration of an overseas company and so forth.

Initially these new forms are acceptable for filing concurrently with the existing forms. However, after August 10 this year, only the new bilingual forms will be acceptable. The remainder of some of the old forms will be converted into bilingual ones later on.

"In order to help presentors to use the new bilingual forms, free sample copies of the new bilingual forms will be available from the Companies Registry for an initial period of three months," Mr Jones added.

Thereafter, presentors will be able to purchase them from the Government Publications Centre. If, however, presentors wish to prepare their own forms, they may do so, provided that the forms comply with the requirements of the Companies Registry.

For more details, presentors may contact the registry's Customer Services Manager on 2867 4570 or the Assistant Registry Manager (Administration) on 2867 2593.

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