December 2023 issue no.3 – Mazars Company Secretarial newsletter

In this newsletter, we will mainly highlight the updates of Implementation of Unique Business Identifier for entities and stamp duty on stock transactions in 2023.

Adoption of Unique Business Identifier (“UBI”)

As a result of advanced technological development worldwide, UBI has been adopted in many other economies over the world to enable governments and businesses to uniquely identify legal entities in various transactions and regulatory interactions.

To sustain Hong Kong’s leading position as an international financial centre and to ease the communication and exchange of data across government departments and businesses to enhance public service delivery and regulate entities more effectively, the Hong Kong Companies Registry undertakes to implement UBI in 2 phases for entities under the administration of the Registrar of Companies of Hong Kong.

Passage of the Stamp Duty (Amendment) (Stock Transfers) Bill 2023

As one of the measures of enhancing stock market liquidity to promote the sustainable development of the market, the Bill introduced a reduction of the stamp duty chargeable for the sale or purchase of Hong Kong stock.

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