The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong has issued a FAQ with respect to the disclosure of financial information with reference to new Companies Ordinance (“NCO”) (Frequently Asked Questions Series 31).

What you should know:

NCO sets out new disclosure requirements regarding “non-statutory accounts”, which potentially affect a wide range of corporate documents, being (a) annual / interim results announcement; (b) interim report, quarterly results announcement / reports, other circulars or listing documents. This FAQ clarifies and highlights NCO impact on disclosure language in relevant documents. It does NOT set out any “new” requirements. Only Hong Kong-incorporated companies are affected.

The FAQ refers to Accounting Bulletin 6 (“Guidance on the Requirements of Section 436 of the Hong Kong Companies Ordinance Cap.622”) (“AB 6”) issued by Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants. AB 6 explains the new requirements in details, including useful sample disclosure language, and implementation timing for companies of various year-end dates.

e.g. for existing companies with a December year-end, your preliminary announcement for 2015 full-year results in early 2016 will be affected.

For (non-finance) “preparers” of these documents (company secretaries, legal counsels), we have prepared an easy-to-understand Summary of AB6 (including extracts of sample disclosure language).

What you should do/watch out for:

Preparers of corporate documents should watch out — this affects routine disclosure language in a range of corporate documents.

Competition law

The Hong Kong Competition Commission (“HKCC”) publishes a draft leniency policy for consultation (closes on 23 October).

What you should know:

This represents another step towards implementation of the Competition Ordinance (the “Ordinance”) on 14 December 2015. We expect HKCC to implement other preparatory steps, including the publication of a guidance on its enforcement priorities.

Competition law is a highly specialist area of law. We have prepared an overview (also setting out a link to a publication by a specialist law firm) to assist companies in understanding the potential significance of the leniency regime.

What you should do/watch out for:

Companies should be aware that leniency agreements are commonly used by global competition authorities to incentivize parties engaged in anti-competitive conduct to come forward and “whistle-blow”. In fact, this arrangement has been highly successful in assisting investigations by authorities.

Privacy law

What you should know:

In September, a telecommunications service provider was convicted of an offence under the new direct marketing regulatory regime. This is the first conviction after the penalty level of the offence was raised, effective 1 April 2013 under the Personal Data (Privacy) (Amendment) Ordinance 2012. For our case summary, please click here.

What you should do/watch out for:

We have included “privacy” as a watch area. It is because the Privacy Commissioner appears to be an “active” regulator, and there is much heightened stakeholder sensitivity generally.

Companies that keep personal information for direct marketing must maintain an “opt out list” of customers that do not consent to “direct marketing”, and comply with this.