Australia’s Link Group launches new digital service for Hong Kong corporate registry

Australian financial services provider Link Group unveiled Wednesday a digital corporate registry service designed to facilitate efficient communication between Hong Kong-listed companies and shareholders.

The Australian group is seeking to digitise Hong Kong’s predominantly paper-based shareholder registry at a time when compliance pressures are on the rise globally.

“We are seeing an increasingly connected group of institutional and retail shareholders who expect and demand better communication from their investee companies, so they can better exercise their minority shareholder rights,” according to Paul Gardiner, CEO of Link’s corporate markets division.

“We hope to encourage better corporate governance, better shareholder engagement by listed companies, and help these companies comply with the regulatory compliance pressures they now face.”

Gardiner said Hong Kong’s buoyant fundraising market, which has seen 106 company listing in the past six months, was a major drawing card.

“Hong Kong is the market everybody needs to be in, so we feel this is the right time to launch,” he said.