Hong Kong assigns every incorporated company a CR No. The number comes from the Companies Registry (公司註冊處) and it stays with the entity for life. Change the name, the identifier remains. The register holds the statutory record for more than a million local companies plus registered non‑Hong Kong entities.
Finance teams see this register often. Hong Kong sits inside many Asian holding structures. Listings pass through it. Bond vehicles do as well. Acquisition SPVs turn up here too. Most entries are private companies limited by shares. When someone needs to confirm which legal entity actually filed a document, the registry record settles the question.
OpenRegistry exposes this register through its MCP server. A request triggers a live Companies Registry search. The response returns upstream fields as they appear in the official source. No reinterpretation layer. Just the record.
What the registry actually returns
A get_company_profile call exposes the same fields visible through the official search interface.
Typical responses include:
-
company_name, sometimes with a Chinese name variant -
company_number(the CR No.) -
company_type, frequently “Private company limited by shares” -
date_of_incorporation -
company_status, for example “Live” or “Dissolved” registered_address
Those are the basics. The registry’s internal structure also appears in the raw payload.
OpenRegistry keeps that inside jurisdiction_data. The block mirrors the structure used by the registry itself. Sometimes the wording comes straight from the incorporation filing. Sometimes it references the statutory form submitted at registration. Either way, the text reflects the original source.
Officer information lives behind a separate request. Call get_officers and the response lists directors plus the company secretary currently recorded.
That secretary role is rarely missing. Hong Kong law requires every company to appoint one, even when the board itself contains only a single director. Small holding companies still show the role.
Filings form another useful surface. A list_filings call typically returns entries such as:
- NAR1 annual return
- NNC1 incorporation form
- ND2A notice of director appointment or resignation
- NR1 change of registered office
Spend a little time reviewing Hong Kong company files and these codes start to look familiar. They come straight from the statutory forms defined under the Companies Ordinance.
What you will not see
The public search does not show shareholder registers. Ownership details usually appear only inside filing documents. The annual return (NAR1) contains one version. The incorporation form (NNC1) may contain another, depending on how the company was set up.
Hong Kong introduced the Significant Controllers Register (SCR) requirement in 2018. Each company must maintain this register internally to record beneficial owners. Access is restricted. Law‑enforcement bodies and certain regulators can request it.
The Companies Registry search itself does not expose SCR data.
For AML tracing, that gap matters. The registry confirms directors. It confirms company status. Filing history appears as well. Ultimate ownership does not.
Documents introduce another practical wrinkle. Retrieving a filing often requires a paid request through the official portal. When available, OpenRegistry returns the filing metadata: form code, filing date, sometimes the document reference. The underlying PDFs still originate from the Companies Registry.
Querying the registry through OpenRegistry MCP
Most workflows start with a name search. Hong Kong company names can include punctuation, spacing quirks, or both English and Chinese versions. Exact matches are not always reliable. Partial searches tend to work better.
Example tool call:
search_companies({
"jurisdiction_code": "HK",
"query": "Pacific Holdings"
})
The response returns candidate entities with their CR numbers. That number matters. It anchors the rest of the lookup.
Once known, retrieving the company profile becomes straightforward.
get_company_profile({
"jurisdiction_code": "HK",
"company_number": "1234567"
})
Officer information sits behind another call.
get_officers({
"jurisdiction_code": "HK",
"company_number": "1234567"
})
Then the filing history.
list_filings({
"jurisdiction_code": "HK",
"company_number": "1234567"
})
This sequence mirrors how a human analyst uses the registry site. Search for the name. Confirm the CR number. Then read the filings to understand how the entity changed over time.
Why finance teams pay attention to these fields
Hong Kong companies show up constantly inside acquisition structures and bond vehicles. A Cayman parent might sit above a Hong Kong intermediate holding company that signs operating contracts. The registry record confirms which entity occupies that layer.
The CR No. becomes the stable reference. Analysts drop it into diligence notes. Audit trails rely on it. Internal compliance systems often store it as the primary identifier.
Director listings help answer a different question: who actually holds board authority. If the filings show an ND2A, a director appointment or resignation probably occurred recently. That change may affect signing authority on financing documents.
Annual returns provide another signal. Each company must submit the NAR1 on a fixed cycle after incorporation. Miss the filing window and the absence becomes visible during diligence reviews. Lenders tend to notice.
Engineers building KYB pipelines run into a separate issue. The legacy paid databases often serve cached company records. Updates can lag behind the official filing register. A recent director resignation may take time to propagate.
Querying the register of record removes that lag. The response reflects the latest filing accepted by the Companies Registry.
Hong Kong remains a common node in Asia‑Pacific corporate structures. Direct access to the registry makes those structures easier to verify during underwriting, counterparty checks, or acquisition screening.
The MCP endpoint for the registry sits at https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/mcp.
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