Press Releases

Number of newly incorporated companies continues to rise

A total of 84,996 local companies were newly incorporated under the Companies Ordinance in the first half of 2013, an increase of 9.34 per cent from 77,738 in the second half of 2012, according to the statistics released by the Companies Registry today (July 14).

"The number of newly registered local companies continued to rise in the first six months of this year, with 16,187 companies incorporated online at our e-Registry (www.eregistry.gov.hk)," said the Registrar of Companies, Ms Ada Chung.

As at the end of June 2013, the total number of live local companies registered was 1,100,778, up 56,134 from the figure at end-2012.

For non-Hong Kong companies that have established a place of business in Hong Kong, 352 companies were newly registered under Part XI of the Companies Ordinance in the first half of 2013, down 4.09 per cent from 367 in the second half of 2012. The total number of non-Hong Kong companies registered reached 9,014 by the end of June 2013.

On the new Companies Ordinance (CO) which was passed by the Legislative Council in July last year, Ms Chung said, "Our aim is to bring the new CO into operation in the first quarter of 2014. For the implementation of the new ordinance, the Administration has made various pieces of subsidiary legislation to set out the relevant administrative, technical and procedural matters. We hope that the legislative process for the remaining subsidiary legislation would be completed by the fourth quarter this year."

The number of charges on assets of companies received for registration in the first half of this year was 16,697, 6.90 per cent down from 17,934 in the second half of 2012. The number of memoranda of satisfaction and releases received for registration in the first half of this year increased by 0.71 per cent to 12,851, compared to 12,761 in the second half of 2012.

The number of documents received for filing during the first six months of 2013 increased by 5.20 per cent to 1,203,163 when compared to the number of 1,143,654 documents received in the second half of 2012.

A total of 1,771,038 searches of document image records were conducted through the Registry's electronic search services in the first half of 2013, a slight decrease of 0.5 per cent when compared to the figure of 1,779,896 in the second half of 2012.

For details of the half-yearly statistics, please visit the "Statistics" section of the Registry's website (www.cr.gov.hk).