Sixty-one submissions have been received in the second public consultation on the Companies Ordinance rewrite, the Financial Services & the Treasury Bureau says.

The final recommendations will be incorporated into the Companies Bill to be issued in the form of a draft bill for further public consultation in mid-2009.

The bureau plans to introduce the bill into the Legislative Council by the third quarter of 2010.

In the second public consultation conclusions released today, the bureau said the following key recommendations will be adopted:

* the Registrar of Companies should be empowered to act upon a court order directing a defendant company to change its infringing name, and substitute its infringing name with its registration number if the company fails to comply with the registrar's direction to do so;

* hybrid names will continue to be disallowed;

* directors' duty of care, skill and diligence should be codified, to clarify the law in this respect. Directors' fiduciary duties should remain uncodified;

* corporate directorship will continue to be allowed in private companies. However, every company must have at least one director who is an individual, subject to a grace period; and,

* some technical amendments, including requiring the instrument of charge to be registered together with some simple particulars, will be made to the relevant provisions.

For more details of the conclusions, click here.