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Some Hong Kong companies change their name every couple of months
- unmole 8y agoThe original title Some Hong Kong companies change their name every couple of months is more appropriate as the artice does not go into why.
- Ketchup901 8y agoWas the title on the news site edited?
- nappy 8y agoThe first line of this article links to a source that appears to show this... is it wrong? It looks like it may fully source their claims.
- dang 8y agoOk we've taken out the why bit.
- baybal2 8y agoHK is an offshore banking heaven. Running from taxmen is easier if they can't bust your scheme by pressing CTRL+F.
- emmanuel_1234 8y agoCurious as to how OP managed to get the registry data. HK government is infamous for sucking at opening their data. This guy: https://webb-site.com/ https://webb-site.com/ is famous for spitting in their eyes regularly to remind them.
- TomMarius 8y agoThere is online registry where you can look these things up. The site sucks but works.
- fermienrico 8y agoI've never heard of "Spitting in their eyes" - such a harsh, disgusting phrase.
- ClassyJacket 8y agoI still don't know as the article doesn't address why...
- thisisit 8y agoSimplest explanation is that they are involved in some kind of fraud. Given that Chinese companies and their financial data are notoriously difficult to obtain, it is no surprise either.
- jpatokal 8y agoThese are companies registered in Hong Kong though, where data like this is easily available, as evinced by the website in question.
- slygent 8y agoI'm the author of this article. Unfortunately financial and officer/director data for Hong Kong private companies is hidden behind a paywall (see details here under the section Tear Down That Wall: https://webb-site.com/articles/identity2.asp https://webb-site.com/articles/identity2.asp), although at least it is available, as far as it goes, but even then, the Ultimate Beneficial Owner is not public. [This is the situation currently being litigated against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who it is claimed still controlled a Hong Kong company Skycom (https://dataguru.hk/hkcompany?crno=0644842 https://dataguru.hk/hkcompany?crno=0644842) behind the scenes].
- Lordarminius 8y agoI'm the author of this article. Can you address the question of why this phenomenon exists ?
- slygent 8y agoWhich phenomenon? Being the author of an article? ;) If you mean "why are names of companies being changed every couple of months?", I really have no idea, especially given that some of these companies seem to be linked, so it's not like different groups of people are doing it. Perhaps. If you mean "why is the Hong Kong government making its Companies Registry less transparent over time?", there are some landmines involving China and tycoons that I'm not going to risk stepping on here, at least right now.
- gojomo 8y agoWhile something shady is possible, it also may be the case that these are "shelf companies", and rotating through names helps advertise/test names that could be attractive to shelf-company buyers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_corporation
- IkmoIkmo 8y agoNo that's not what shelf companies are attractive for. It's all about age and quick access to an incorporated entity, the name barely matters and can easily be changed on request. Advertising or testing names by using a public company register makes no sense, it's like apple testing the name of their new phone through some public register of a telecom license filing.
- gojomo 8y agoI can believe you, but every online offer of shelf companies I've seen has prominently listed an inventory of actual, available-today companies by name, making me think some buyers don't want to go through the name change. And, one site I just browsed lists as one of the "main reasons" for using a shelf company is "to assist with the sometimes onerous task of designing a new company name". Which actually suggests another theory for the HK name changes: maybe they're a fast/cheap way to instantly reserve a corporate name of interest, which is then later released to whoever really wants it.
- kijin 8y agoThis sounds like the common practice of squatting on a domain name. People who are good at it don't squat on the same set of names forever; they adjust their portfolios based on what's trendy at the time and let unprofitable names expire. People who peddle shelf corporations might do the same, except they can easily rename their wares. And of course, just like domain names, you can't register more than one corporation with the same name in the same jurisdiction. Whoever owns this company has probably gone through several phases during which they thought there might be heavy demand for names related to Chinese resources, e-healthcare, education, land, and capital management. They also seem to have a procedure in place that reverts an unsold shelf corporation to a placeholder name or internal identifier (Premier Dragon) after a while.
- lordnacho 8y agoDo the names have to mean approximately the same thing or sounds the same in English and Chinese? You can imagine someone sneakily using one or the other language to obfuscate.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y agoThe company names rules don't say anything about the names having to match up in any way: https://www.cr.gov.hk/en/companies_ordinance/docs/Guide_RegCompName-e.pdf https://www.cr.gov.hk/en/companies_ordinance/docs/Guide_RegC...
- MrMorden 8y agoStreet names in Hong Kong don't have to match up either, e.g. 青山道 vs Castle Peak Road. (Maybe there's an obscure or obscure-to-me source that makes this one make sense, though.)
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y agoI suspect it's something to do with Hong Kong's colonial history… Chinese names chosen by Chinese-speaking locals and English names chosen by English-speaking colonial administrators…?
- TeMPOraL 8y agoProbably tax trickery. I've been told that some franchises of grocery and alcohol stores in Poland rotate through names every couple years, in order to avoid paying some taxes that kick in after a number of years of operation. I didn't verify that info, though.
- krzrak 8y agoThe name has nothing to do here, because companies are identified by NIP (tax id), so the name doesn't matter. Probably what you meant is that new company is created and it takes over business from the previous.
- rbanffy 8y agoIt's a trick beginning musicians use. It allows them to be hired after they did a awful live performance that got them blacklisted. IIRC, Ian Anderson, from Jethro Tull, half-jokingly said on an interview this is how the band got its name - this was the name they had when they were stopped being blacklisted.
- fujimotos 8y agoWhile skimming the record of the questioned company, I noticed that several names listed there are actually the ones of other (existing) companies. For example, "中電光谷聯合控股有限公司" ("China Electronics Optics Valley Union Holding Company Limited") is a public company listed on HKEx. So, my guess is that something is wrong with the data scraping? ---- Note: Some googling reveals that the company ("PREMIER DRAGON DEVELOPMENT LIMITED") is a manufacturer / exporter of women's underwear, with 1-5 employees.
- wodenokoto 8y agoAs for the premier dragon company, isn't it typical for Chinese companies to have names unrelated to their business, but which sounds good to stick investees who wants to invest in IT?
- gumby 8y agoSounds like I should rename my current startup, frobx.ai to “Enormously Profitable in Multiple Lines of Business”
- na85 8y agoWell, frobx doesn't exactly roll off the tongue ;)
- plorkyeran 8y agoWell there was the famous example of Long Island Ice Tea's stock soaring when they renamed to Long Blockchain.
- gumby 8y agoHa, I was making a joke but that is an excellent real world example!
- netsharc 8y agoOn that topic Nokia was a pulp mill and rubber company...
- torgian 8y agoI recently opened a Hong Kong company. During the process I’ve seen how easy it can be to change your company name, but there is a company registry number tied to it. I don’t know if that changes too though.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- njarboe 8y agoEchos of Vernor Vinge's 2007 novel "Rainbows End" where one character has a system where his companies spawn other companies every few seconds.
- T-A 8y agoAre you sure you're not thinking of Charles Stross' "Accelerando" (where this is done in Ch. 2. "Troubadour" [1])? It's been a while since I read "Rainbows End" [2], but I don't recall autonomous companies in it, and I don't see an obvious way that they would fit in the plot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
- njarboe 8y agoI think you are right. I'll have to give "Accelerando" another read.
- GreaterFool 8y agoIt could be one of those "off the shelf" companies. Rather than incorporating one's own company one can buy an already existing company and change the name. Given how easy it is to incorporate in Hong Kong I wouldn't recommend that. Also, those name changes are done through Companies Registry and part of public record. I wouldn't necessarily brush it up as shady.
- miguelmota 8y agoIt’s just like ad networks and ad agencies that rename after being blacklisted or caught of malpractice