On 31st May 2021 a different Hong Kong listed company, Champion Technology Holdings Limited  (stock ticker 92) agreed to sell its stake in Kantone Holdings 看通集團有限公司 (1059). How do we know? Because they declared it only a day after the fact.

But who did they sell the stake to? That we didn’t know until last Sunday, 17th October 2021, almost 5 months later. (By the by, I don’t remember too many Sunday filings of this nature before. After so long, what’s the rush of filing on a weekend?). On that day a Mr/Ms Chan Koon Wa admitted that they became, via a BVI company, the buyer of those shares. Why did it take them almost 5 months to admit this simple fact? No explanation is provided, let alone an apology.

(Champion and Kantone have a history, and not a happy one, at least for investors).

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Hoshino Coffee (HK) Limited 星乃咖啡(香港)有限公司

It already operates in Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan as well as Japan.

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Alipay’s Chinese name is 支付宝, so is it connected to new Hong Kong company ePay technology Limited 支付易有限公司? Almost certainly not: it turns out there are a lot of Hong Kong companies with similar names. Alipay’s Hong Kong holding company is Alipay (Hong Kong) Holding Limited 支付寶(香港)控股有限公司 according to the misbegotten Ant Group IPO prospectus, but it turns out there are a lot of Hong Kong companies with 支付 (which literally means “to pay (money)”) in their name, starting with CHINA EXPRESS PAYMENT SYSTEM LIMITED 中國運通支付系統有限公司 (now CHINA EXPRESS INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LIMITED 中國運通投資管理有限公司) in 2001.

There have been a total of 6 Hong Kong companies with 支付易 in the name, 2 of which have since dissolved, one of which had the same Chinese name 支付易有限公司 and was only dissolved in April 2020. However, there have been only 3 companies with 易支付 in the name, one of which was very short-lived. That’s because it is the main part of the name of PayEase (Hong Kong) Limited 首信易支付(香港)有限公司, the Hong Kong subsidiary of Chinese payment gateway pioneer PayEase Corp.

In conclusion, this second coming of 支付易有限公司 is not who you might think it is…

🎄 🎄 🎄

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The first company in Hong Kong with "Christmas" in its name was the very earnest-sounding T. C. W. CHRISTMAS CARDS MANUFACTURING CO., LTD -THE-. This was only company number 1705 in the Companies Registry, incorporated in 1940-05-23, a year before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong which was completed on, erm, Christmas Day 1941. It’s also the only Christmas card company incorporated in Hong Kong ever. It was finally dissolved almost 16 years later in 1956-02-17. Out of the 88 companies incorporated in 1940, 35 were dissolved on the same day. Indeed, altogether, 360 companies were dissolved on this day. Does anyone know why? If so, get in touch.

The next attempt to exploit Christmas commercially with a limited liability came in more than 20 years later 1964-02-18, when the plainly-named CHRISTMAS DECORATION LIMITED (with matching Chinese name 聖誕飾品有限公司) gave it a go, before giving up 5 years later in 1969-05-30. Its register of charges is apparently still available. Unlike Christmas cards, Christmas decorations have inspired 15 Hong Kong companies.

The third attempt was the charm, with MR. CHRISTMAS LIMITED (with no Chinese name, alas), set up on Christmas Eve 1970 and still going 50 days later. They seem to be a subsidiary of an even older company, Mr. Christmas Inc., a US-incorporated (perhaps New York-incorporated?) toy manufacturer.

Altogether, there have been 125 Hong Kong companies with "Christmas" in the name, the latest being the practical Jiasheng Christmas Ornaments Co., Limited 佳盛聖誕飾品有限公司, incorporated only a week ago on 2020-12-18. 64 of these 125 companies had a Chinese name that included the characters 聖誕, the Chinese for Christmas. There are, though 101 Hong Kong companies with 聖誕 in their Chinese name, so what is going on with the other 37 companies’ English name? Some don’t mention Christmas at all, most have “Xmas” or “X’mas”, a few Santas, and a Shengdan and Sheng Dan (Mandarin pronunciation of 聖誕). The first 聖誕 non-Christmas company was X'MAS NOVELTY LIMITED 聖誕裝飾有限公司.

My favourite Hong Kong Christmas company name, though, must be Best Booth Christmas Santa Naughty Holiday Xmas App Limited (without corresponding bonkers Chinese name, sadly), a 14-month effort from 2011-12-02 to 2013-02-08. I can find absolutely no information about this company online, so if you know anything about it, please get in touch!

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Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I wish you only great wealth and fortuitous limited liability. ☃️ Have any Hong Kong Christmas company stories, or foggy data? Want good access to Hong Kong data? Get in touch! Or leave a comment below 👇 And subscribe to our posts with the button above!

In 2007 PLOVER ENTERPRISES LIMITED appeared. After a few name changes it became Haitong UT Capital Group Co., Limited 海通恒信金融集團有限公司 in 2014.

And then nothing much happened…

Until 2017, when Haitong UT Leasing HK Limited 海通恒信租賃(香港)有限公司 and Haitong UT Holding Limited 海通恒信融資租賃控股有限公司 were born.

So far, so standard corporate structure.

Then on 13th August 2018 came Haitong UT HK 1 Limited, Haitong UT HK 2 Limited, Haitong UT HK 3 Limited… up to Haitong UT HK 10 Limited. Weirdly, their Company Registry numbers are not in order nor consecutive…

And that was it until November 2019 when 15, 16, and 17 appeared. That’s right, a few numbers were skipped again, just like with the JD Aries series. Is it deliberate? It is superstition? Did someone lose count?

And then nothing again, until this month, December 2020, when a spinoff, Haitong UT Brilliant Limited (no Chinese name) was shown off at the start of the month, and 18 and 19 sneaked in just before Christmas on 22nd December.

Want to find out who is behind this? Contribute to the Open Hong Kong Companies Registry with a modest US$25 fee!

• Mummy: Hong Kong company 3001918, MIMIMA LIMITED 米米媽有限公司

• Pig: Hong Kong company 3001929, MIMICHU LIMITED 米米豬有限公司

• Kwok: Hong Kong company 3001936, MIMIKWOK LIMITED 郭米米有限公司

• Friend: Hong Kong company 3001962, MIMIFD LIMITED 老友米有限公司

• Son: Hong Kong company 3001963, MIMIJAI LIMITED 米米姐有限公司

If you want to contribute to the public who is behind these companies, click on any of their names above and donate US$25 to the cause.

(Do note that the standard way to write 40 in Roman numerals is actually XL, an example of where the rule of thumb is broken. Only 4 companies in Hong Kong have ever been registered with the sequence “xxxx” in their name, and only once as Roman numerals. One of those companies is the sadly departed company number 1724338, variously called Urban Wealth Trading Limited 都盛貿易有限公司, XXXX Limited 爻爻有限公司, and the audacious 2.718281828459045235360287471352662497757247 Limited 2點718281828459045235360287471352662497757247有限公司. If you want to be the first to know who the shareholders and directors of this company were, it’ll only cost you US$25, and we’ll then share the information freely.)

Using our data platform (get in touch for a demo) we were able to easily ascertain the following about JD Aries Development companies in Hong Kong:

• All companies with “JD Aries” in the name are in the form “JD Aries Development [Roman numerals] Limited” or “JD Aries Development [Roman numerals] (HK) Limited”.

• The first JD Aries company registered was JD Aries Development VII Limited on 8th November 2019. Yes, if you’re keeping up, that is supposedly the 7th in the series… But there are none before it in the Hong Kong Companies Registry. It was also the only JD Aries registered that day.

• That was the only, unremarkable, JD Aries, until it was joined by 4 more on 20th December 2019, from JD Aries Development IX Limited to JD Aries Development XII Limited (i.e. 9 to 12). Why no 8? Is it too lucky?

• Again there was a pause, until 13 to 15 on 24th February 2020 (with “(HK)” in the name for the first time), then 16 to 20 on 15th May 2020 (without “(HK)” again), followed by more batches in September, October and December (all back with “(HK)”) with no more missing numbers.

• Apart from JD Aries 40, the Roman numerals are in the standard format, e.g. XXIV for 24.

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The growth in the companies’ formation over time, none of which have yet been dissolved, can be seen in the graph of cumulative count below, reaching a current 33 JD Aries companies:

There’s no indication online of what “JD Aries” could be… If you want to fund finding out who is behind these companies, it’ll only cost you US$25.

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The lucky company’s English name is DOUBLE DRAGON INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT LIMITED, and its Chinese name is 雙龍國際發展有限公司. Very auspicious. It was incorporated on 4th December 2020, where despite stronger and stronger measures against openness by the Hong Kong Companies Registry (CRHK), including mandatory captchas, the company was found by our scrapers at around 7pm Hong Kong time on the same day.

Technically speaking — and we at Public Data Market are nothing if not scrupulous about being technically correct when it comes to our datasets — the company with CRHK Number 3,000,000 is only the 2,999,998th in the registry, as record-keeping was spotty in the early days of the Registry, and perhaps some records were lost over time, leading to no companies claiming numbers 32 and 1867.

The rate of growth in company registrations is very clear from our data platform (get in touch if you want to be part of our beta programme!):

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Plotting on a log scale, the constancy of the rate of growth company formation is remarkably clear:

Of course not all companies survive. At the moment of the incorporation of Hong Kong Company Number 3,000,000, there were 1,416,241 companies that hadn’t been dissolved in our data, i.e. more than half of Hong Kong companies have not survived until now. Again, the rate of growth in extant companies — but sometimes also decay — can be seen in this graph produced by our data platform:

Note in particular the stall in growth of living companies between 1997 and 2004, where the dissolution of old companies was keeping pace with the incorporation of new companies, and a more recent stall since 2018, where the number of dissolutions was actually overtaking the number of incorporations.

Company number 2,000,000 (FENLAN FENOU HEALTH INDUSTRY CO., LIMITED 芬蘭芬歐健康實業有限公司, which seems to be the only company in the registry containing the letter sequence “fenou”) was born in 2013 and died in 2018. If company incorporations keep up with the historical trend, company number 4,000,000 will be born in around 4 years, at the start of 2025. But how much of Hong Kong or its registry will survive until then?

Subscribe now to keep up with our analyses of Hong Kong through its data that we collect:

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