HK recognises Principality of Hutt River
21 January 2012
Foreign companies (those incorporated outside HK) which have a place of business in HK are required to register as non-HK companies under Part XI (s332) of the Companies Ordinance. We discovered a curious thing while trawling the HK Companies Registry "Cyber Search Centre" (yes, the site was designed back in the 1990s when "Cyber" was considered hip). One of the search functions allows you to list non-HK companies by place of incorporation. So there is a drop-down box which allows you to select the desired place of incorporation, and in that list you will find "Principality of Hutt River":
The "Principality of Hutt River" is a wheat farm of about 75 sq km (about the size of HK Island) in Western Australia. The "Principality" (why not just go for broke and call it a Kingdom?) claims to be an "Independent Sovereign State" having seceded from Australia in 1970. It is run by Leonard Casley, or "HRH Prince Leonard" as he prefers to be known. Here is its web site, which makes the HK Companies Registry site look modern, and deep in that site you will find the "Companies House" of the "Principality of Hutt River".
Neither the State of Western Australia, nor the Federal Government of Australia, recognise the "Principality", and nor does any member state of the United Nations, but apparently Hong Kong is ready to register companies from this place - or otherwise it wouldn't be in the list, would it? So far as we can tell, no companies from this place have been registered in HK. Coming soon: the Principality of Hunghom, with HRH Prince Victor, the Principality of Cyberport, with HRH Prince Richard, and the Principality of Discovery Bay, with HRH Prince Payson.
Apart from the "Principality of Hutt River", all the other places on the Companies Registry list are countries and territories recognised by the UN and included in the international standard ISO 3166-1, including places like the Norwegian Bouvet Island, the most remote island on Earth, just above the Antarctic Circle, which is uninhabited apart from penguins and fur seals, who are unlikely to incorporate, and the British Indian Ocean Territory, also known as the Chagos Islands, which were forcibly depopulated in the 1960s to make way for the US bomber base on Diego Garcia. Not a lot of companies coming from there, one suspects. There's also Heard Island and McDonald Islands, unpopulated Australian territories which contain the only two active volcanoes in Australian territory (always handy in a pub quiz) but no companies registry. Similarly the Holy See (Vatican City State) is in the list but apparently the Pope doesn't do companies. We've taken a snapshot of the full list in a PDF here - just use the drop-down box.
The Companies Registry should remove the Principality from the list and revise it to include only those recognised places which register companies. That also means expanding the list to include non-sovereign places with their own incorporation laws rather than lumping them together under UN designations - for example, the 50 states of the United States each have their own registries and their own company laws.
In the Webb-site Who's Who database you can find a list of countries and dependent territories from which companies are currently registered in HK.
© Webb-site.com, 2012
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