Should Directors’ Personal Information be Accessible by the Public in Hong Kong?  

Oleh:

Chan, Raymond SiuYeung ; Ho, John Kong Shan

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: SIBR-Thammasat 2014 Conference on Interdisciplinary Business & Economics Research June 5th- 7th, 2014 di Emerald Hotel Bangkok, page 1-2.
Topik: Directors’ personal information; disclosure; company law; Hong Kong
Fulltext: b14-146.pdf (31.8KB)

Isi artikel

Following the lead of the United Kingdom and Australia, Hong Kong recently proposed to tighten up the access of directors’ residential addresses and identity card or passport numbers by the public during the reform of its Companies Ordinance exercise, but encountered strong opposition from the media and various professional bodies, leading the government’s decision to shelve the proposal. This article identifies some major reasons for this outcome. First, the government had wrongly missed out a key stakeholder in its consultation exercise-the media. Since the returning of Hong Kong to Mainland China in 1997, there have been fears amongst the local media of an erosion of press freedom. Together with the newly implementedPersonal Data and Privacy Law effective in April 2013, the proposal to restrict access of personal information of companies’ directors has come at a sensitive time when journalists are already under pressure, hence the support for the legislative proposal amongst the media was deemed to wane. Second, the successful implementation of the Personal Data and Privacy Law by the government gave rise to its misperception of similar public support for restricting access to corporate directors’ personal information. Third, the government jumped to the conclusion to confirm the proposal based on the majority views expressed by the submissions to the consultation paper. However, the submissions were dominated mainly by listed companies whose views should better be considered as of a group of similar stakeholders. In particular, some of these companies are controlled by the same tycoons. It is 2 therefore hardly fair to call them different views.This article highlights the lessons that the Hong Kong government should learn from this failure experience of transplanting a corporate law reform that had overlooked the differences in the unique local situations.

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