THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG LIBRARIES. Hong Kong Collection. gift from Hong Kong (China). Companies Registry

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2 THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG LIBRARIES Hong Kong Collection gift from Hong Kong (China). Companies Registry

3 REQUIREMENTS FOR DOCUMENTS GUIDELINES 2004 CR Companies Registry

4 INTRODUCTION The Requirements for Documents Guidelines (the Guidelines) were first issued by the Registrar of Companies (the Registrar) in 1993 and revised in The Guidelines are now further updated as a result of the repeal of the Companies (Requirements for Documents) Regulation upon the commencement of the Companies (Amendment) Ordinance 2003 on 13 February Section 346(1) of the Companies Ordinance (the Ordinance) as amended by the Companies (Amendment) Ordinance 2003 requires inter alia that every document delivered to the Registrar shall be in either the English or Chinese languages and comply with the requirements specified by the Registrar. 3. The Registrar has specified general requirements for documents under section 346(l)(c) of the Ordinance with effect from 13 February Details of the specification have been published in the Gazette on 16 January The Guidelines which contain the detailed requirements are now updated as follows to assist companies and their agents in complying with the Registrar's requirements. REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO PAPER DOCUMENTS Printing Requirements 4. Hand-written documents will not be accepted by the Companies Registry for filing. Documents must be printed in BLACK ink. In this respect, "printed" means produced by one of the following processes: - (a) Wordprocessing, computer operated printing; (b) Letterpress, lithography, gravure, electrostatic photocopying, offset lithography, "photostat" or comparable processes, stencil duplication (where stencil duplication is used, wax stencil and black ink must be used); (c) (d) Typewriting; or Such other processes as the Registrar in his discretion may accept.

5 Type Setting Requirements 5. Documents lodged for registration must be suitable for conversion into image records without undue loss of legibility and must comply with the following requirements: - (a) Type classification The typeface shall be Sans serif (without serifs) Roman (upright) Times or similar typefaces Medium of semi-bold in appearance Do not use Light weight (thin) typefaces Type with exaggerated thick and thin strokes and serifs Condensed type Italics for continuous text setting (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) Size The height of the smallest letter shall not be less than 1.8 mm except that the typeface for an English language prospectus shall not be less than the type known as 8 point Times. Larger typeface will increase legibility. The typeface of all Chinese characters appearing in documents shall not be less than 2.5 mm in height. The smallest size of typefaces does not include ascenders, descenders, accents and punctuation marks. Space Line spacing (leading) must not be less than 2 points. Footnotes, sidenotes etc. These can be set smaller than the main text but must not be smaller than 8 points. Rules (Printed lines) Rule thickness should be a minimum of 0.25 mm. Colour of ink Black colour must be sufficiently clear to enable reproduction of good, clean quality image records or a hard copy of the original document. Margins Margins must be not less than 5 mm on all sides of the documents except that the top or bottom portion of the front page of documents that are not presented in specified forms must be not less than 35 mm or 50 mm

6 respectively. bursting. The margins are to be measured after trimming and Paper Requirements 6. Unless otherwise agreed by the Registrar, documents should be printed on paper which meets the following requirements: - (a) (b) Formats and technical specifications The Registrar will only accept documents which are portrait A4 size (297 mm x 210 mm). It must not consist of half lines leaving the other half lines to be matched from another page. Other requirements Colour : White * One/both side : Printed on one side only * Listing : Forms printed by a computer must be printed on plain paper and not on "listing (lined) paper", except in the case of separately bound bulky shareholders' lists Grammage : The grammage shall not be less than 76g/m 2 7. Documents that do not comply with the requirements set out in paragraphs 4 to 6 above may not be accepted. The Registrar reserves the right to refuse any document for registration if in general appearance, legibility, format, size and durability the document appears to be unsuitable for conversion into image records. REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO PAPER SHAREHOLDERS' LISTS 8. When shareholders' lists are to be produced by word-processor or computer-operated printers, the following requirements shall be complied with, in addition to those set out in paragraphs 4 to 6 above: - (a) Line printers or laser printers should be used. Dot Matrix System may be used provided that the printer is of the 24-pin type, of the near-letter quality and enhanced printing mode is employed in the printing of documents. In all cases there must be quality control on output. New printer ribbons are therefore essential.

7 (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) The type size should not be less than 8 points and the pitch should not be greater than 12 CPI (i.e. not more than 12 letters in 1 inch). The top copy only must be submitted. It must be printed on plain paper and not on "listing (lined) paper", except in the case of separately bound bulky shareholders' lists. When produced on continuous stationery, the copy must be trimmed and burst and securely tagged together before filing. However, for bulky shareholders' lists, the Registrar is prepared to accept bound volumes without trimming and bursting. For separately bound bulky shareholders' lists, the Registrar is prepared to accept computer printout paper larger than A4 size paper. Documents should have a margin of at least 5 mm on all sides after bursting and trimming. However, the top or bottom portion of the front page of documents should have a margin of 35 mm or 50 mm respectively. 9. Paper shareholders' lists that do not comply with the requirements set out in paragraph 8 above may be rejected by the Companies Registry. REQUIREMENTS FORMAT RELATING TO SHAREHOLDERS' LISTS IN CD-ROM 10. Public companies having a large number of shareholders may supply their shareholders' lists to the Registrar in the form of a CD-ROM. When shareholders' lists are submitted in the form of a CD-ROM, the following requirements shall be complied with, in addition to the general format, font size and type set out in paragraph 5 above. General Requirements 11. ShareholdersMists submitted in CD-ROM format should meet the following general requirements: - (a) Electronic records in English shall be encoded in American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) or ISO : 2000 standard. (b) Electronic records in Chinese shall be encoded in Big-5 or ISO :2000 standard.

8 (c) Where electronic records in Chinese are encoded in the Big-5 standard, the set of characters is restricted to that coded in the Big-5 standard or included in the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) published by the Government in (d) Where electronic records in Chinese are encoded in the ISO : 2000 standard, the set of characters is restricted to Chinese characters within the Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) Unified Ideographs characters coded in the ISO : 2000 standard or characters in the HKSCS published by the Government in (e) Electronic records shall be sent in the form of CD-ROM in ISO 9660 format. (f) Electronic records shall follow the following file format standards: - Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF); Microsoft Word Format (DOC version 6.0 or above); or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) (compatible to Acrobat version 3 or above) (g) (h) (i) (j) Electronic records given or presented shall not contain any computer instructions, including but not limited to: - * computer viruses; and macros, scripts and fields that depend on the execution environment and the execution of which will cause changes to the electronic record itself or the information system displaying the electronic record. The CD-ROM should be labeled indicating the company name and the company number, the document to which it relates (Annual Return or Return of Allotment) and the date to which the document is made up. A director or the secretary of the company should certify the records by signing on the label or signing the files contained in the CD-ROM with a digital signature. If the CD-ROM is signed digitally, a digital signature shall be attached to the electronic record in accordance with the Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standard and the Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS#7). For electronic records comprising multiple electronic files, each individual file shall be separately signed digitally. Details of the shareholders should be set out in the same format prescribed in the specified form for filing of the Annual Return (Form AR1) or Return of Allotments (Form SC1), as the case may be.

9 (k) A header showing the company name, the date to which the shareholders' list is made up, the page number and the heading of each column should be shown on each page. (1) Particulars of current and past members should be saved in a single file to facilitate the searching of information. They should not be saved separately. (m) The total number of issued shares (of each class of shares, if there is more than one class of share) should preferably be shown on the last page of the shareholders' list. If this is not possible, an index is required to indicate the page in which the total number of issued shares (of each class, if more than one class) is shown. Requirements for <DOC' or 'RTF' File Format 12. The requirements for C DOC or 'RTF' file format are as follows :- (a) (b) (c) The bottom margin of each page should be not less than 25 mm. The file should be broken down into smaller files of 3 MB or less per file to facilitate the loading of information. The files should be separated according to the alphabetical order of the shareholders' names with comprehensible file name, say, A to B, Cl, C2, C3,DtoH 13. CD-ROMs containing records and information which do not comply with the requirements set out in paragraphs 10 to 12 or cannot be read or opened by the Registrar will be rejected. Submission of Shareholders' Lists in CD-ROM Format 14. The CD-ROM should be submitted together with the relevant Annual Return (Form AR1) or Return of Allotment (Form SCI) to the Companies Registry at 14th Floor, Queensway Government Offices. Companies Registry 13 February 2004

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18 X HKP R42 Requirements for documents guidelines 2004 [Hong Kong] : Companies Registry, [2004] Date Due

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