Saimaa ringed seal, Rantasalmi, Finland. Photo: Jan Ebr and Ivana Ebrová, CC BY 4.0

Blog ·

Business data in Hong Kong. Where the records live.

Hong Kong keeps an unusually open company record at the Companies Registry, with well over 1.4 million local companies on the register and a constant churn of incorporations and deregistrations.

What Atlas holds for Hong Kong

…companies in Atlas for Hong Kong
…with a phone number
…with a confirmed website

Source: the Atlas database, updated automatically.

The official records

Companies incorporated under the Companies Ordinance are recorded by the Companies Registry (cr.gov.hk), whose ICRIS Cyber Search Centre lets anyone look up a company by name or company number. A separate Business Registration Number issued by the Inland Revenue Department now doubles as the territory's Unique Business Identifier, linking a firm across government systems. The register holds more than 1.4 million live local companies plus thousands of registered non-Hong Kong companies, and the formation-and-dissolution rate is among the highest in the world as holding vehicles and trading entities are opened and wound up.

Financial services, trade and logistics, import-export and professional services anchor the active base, much of it oriented toward cross-border business with mainland China. The data is open and searchable, but accessibility is not the same as having been collected, so Atlas reads ICRIS and the open web directly rather than relying on a stored list.

How to use the register

  • Start from the register, not from a bought list. It is the legal record of every company.
  • Read the status field. Registers keep closed companies too. See how many have closed in other registers.
  • Check the website belongs to the company, with the registration number or a distinguishing name on the page.

Sources

Descriptions are based on the national sources above. Figures in the text are rounded and change over time. Found an error? Write to atlasforgex@proton.me. More countries: business data by country and registers by country.

See the new companies in your own industry. Free, no sign-up.