Company secretary Hong Kong Registrar power and duties

The Registrar or called government appointed legal company secretary Hong Kong is basically a person who holds and maintains all the company’s data and register, and authorize several of different documents according required information for starting a business in Hong Kong as an expat and resident. The Registrar possesses a lot of power which includes acceptation or rejection of documents, specifying any type of forms and demanding different requirements while registration of documents or verification. The Registrar of any company is always appointed by the Chief Executive of the company. Now, after talking this much about the Registrar, one might have already got to the conclusion that a Registrar is a person, well...! If you got there much by yourself then I am sorry to say my friends, but a Registrar can be a person, but it’s not always compulsory. The Registrar can also be a company or an organization, that works together to give out these certain duties.

The office and any other accessories regarding work, is designed and is under the supervision of the Chief Executive of the company, because he’s the one who has appointed the Registrar.

There are several duties that are done by the Registrar or government appointed legal company secretary Hong Kong, other than keeping the records of the company. These duties have been assigned to him/her under the companies ordinance, for example for giving or refusing of starting a business in Hong Kong as an expat.

Specification of the type of forms

The Registrar receives a number of documents every day, but he/she can set up a format of form to be followed by everyone. He technically decides in which form he wants to receive the documents, excluding the documents, whose form is decided by the ordinance beforehand, or there are those documents too that may not be assigned by the ordinance. The type of form Registrar suggests, should be more than one, because there are cases that one might get rejected or some other serious circumstances happen.

Allotting guidelines

The Registrar has the power to issue a guideline that describes the procedure or process that the Registrar wants to follow when functioning or exercising his power or the operation that is being proceeding under ordinance. Or any other function, that will undergo Registrar supervision. These guidelines, later, must get to the person, who might get affected by it. Copies of the guidelines should also be made for the public availability and these guidelines should be given a high priority.

If the Registrar wishes to change these guidelines, than he must go through the above-mentioned steps again. Breaching these guidelines, usually does not ended up in a law-suit, but if the court decides to go by these guidelines, then the consequence might be fatal. But for that to happen, there is a need of proof of that person declining the guidelines.

If the approval of any document is needed by the ordinance or any other section, than the Registrar must do it, in the best manner he possibly believes, according to the already present information to him.

Payable fees of the Registrar

In any corporation, the salary of each and every member is decided and paid by the finance department. Same goes for the Registrar too. The financial secretary decides the payment of a Registrar and can vary salary up and down, regarding the performance of the services of Registrar. The Registrar is free to ask any questions, regarding his salary to the financial secretary, and in return financial secretary has to answer it.

Registrar duties for companies register

There are several duties that needed to be done by the Registrar, as some has been already mentioned above. Now, let’s talk about another important one i.e., the keeping or discarding of the documents in the companies register.

The information and the documents that needs to be kept for years by the Registrar are as follows:

• Which are received by Registrar for registration of any sort.
• Which were already registered by the former Registrar, this is so that the companies’ data does not goes lost with time.
• Registrar needs to record and save the information about the addresses of a company’s Registrar, Director, Acting director and the Secretary. About the following this needs to be done:
• A currently working company.
• A company that falls in accordance to the ordinance’s section 777 or 132 by virtue.
• A company falling under the ordinance’s section 20(1).
• After saving the specified addresses on the company’s official computers and papers of company’s Registrar, Director, Acting Director and the Secretary, the company’s register should be updates with the new data. The new addresses of the company’s official registered offices and their principal office, should be saved alongside with the former record. The new company’s official address should also be stored regarding the section 658(3).

How the records are kept is also a skill, if they are held properly and always ready whenever demanded. The records must be kept in a manner that is suggested by the Registrar. Also, it should be kept in a way, that is easily available for the public and can copied when needed. The documents and the records might be considered faulty, if they are held in a form, that is different from its usual self and the Registrar might be accountable for this and will have to face a law-suit too.

Following are the documents that can be removed or discarded by the Registrar:

• Those that are given by the ordinance can be discarded, once their respective data has been stored.
• Those under former ordinance.
• Those which has been in records for more than 7 years.

Comments

Before starting a business in Hong Kong as an expat it important to know the role of the Registrar is very complex. There are plenty of hard duties that Registrar has to perform, he has to verify the documents, monitor the companies register, keep the records safe but besides that Registrar also possess power and can demand any documents or modify the forms according to his/her satisfaction.

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