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Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang, at the press conference after the meeting of the Task Force on Economic Challenges at Conference Hall, Central Government Offices New Annexe, Central, today (January 22):
Reporter: You talk about revisiting the procedures for rescuing business, can you elaborate how you plan to go about that?
Chief Executive: Well, we believe that we will be facing a larger number of corporates running into financial difficulties as a result of the financial tsunami that we are facing. At the moment the only procedures, protocol that we have in Hong Kong, legal procedure, is for that corporation to go bankrupt, and that of course entails a loss of a company and a loss of jobs to many people which the corporate employs. Other countries, other economies have other methods of doing it, for instance in the United States you have chapter 11 which allows a period for the company to regroup, to readjust, to get new liquidity, to get new investors in order to retain the corporate structure, particularly retaining jobs. There are other counterparts in Europe dealing with corporate rescue. In Hong Kong in fact we have certain specific proposals which we put to the public for consultation, in fact it was in the form of a bill discussed in the Legislative Council early in this decade. Unfortunately because of vested interests and objections we abandoned the exercise. I believe it is now right for us to revisit the issue. It is the strong views of TFEC members that this is a subject we should address. This is a golden opportunity to prevent unnecessary bankruptcies of companies in Hong Kong.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Thursday, January 22, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:00
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