Company Law in Hong Kong – Practice and Procedure covers the main areas of core company law, including major parts of the Companies Ordinance (Cap.622) (“CO”).

 

The main legislative development in 2021 in the company law field relates to commencement of some of the provisions of the CO that had not been commenced when the rest of the CO came into operation in 2014 (following enactment in 2012). These are the provisions introducing certain privacy protections for inspection of personal particulars of directors and others in the Companies Register (as maintained by the Companies Registrar), as well as in companies’ own registers of directors and secretaries.

 

As is the case each year, there have been a number of new Hong Kong cases dealing with company law handed down in the past year. One interesting decision is that of the Court of Appeal in Wang Pengying v Ng Wing Fai [2021] 1 HKLRD 997, dealing with the common law derivative action pursuant to the fraud on the company exception to the proper plaintiff rule in Foss v Harbottle (1843) 2 Hare 461.