Disclosure of Residential Addresses and Identification Numbers
Under the current Companies Ordinance, an individual director and company secretary of companies incorporated in Hong Kong are required to provide their residential address and identification numbers at the time of incorporating a company. These information are available for public access and copy through the website of Companies Registry.
Due to the increasing public concerns related to the protection of personal data privacy and misuse of personal data, the new Companies Ordinance introduces a regime that seeks to strike a reasonable balance between protecting privacy and the need for public access to personal data.
Under the new Companies Ordinance, the residential address of a director and the full identification numbers of any person will not be made available for public inspection.
A director or secretary is required to provide both the correspondence addresses and a usual residential addresses. But the residential addresses will not be disclosed and only the directors’ correspondence addresses will be shown on the Companies Register for public access.
The personal identification number (such as identity card or passport number) of individual director and company secretary will be protected, only certain digits in the identification number will be shown on the Companies Register for public inspection.