Foster Moore was delighted at the opportunity to once again participate and sponsor the International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) annual conference. This years event, the 36th annual meeting, was held in beautiful Boston, Massachusetts.
The management and team of registry people at Foster Moore welcome delegates to the CRF annual conference. Held in our home city of Auckland, New Zealand.
Foster Moore are delighted to be the platinum sponsor this wonderful event.
Foster Moore or its personnel have participated in every CRF conference since the organisation began in 2003.
Foster Moore – The Registry People are delighted to welcome you, a fellow registry person, to our home city. We hope the week is a productive and successful one for you.
Our personnel will be on hand throughout the week of the CRF conference to demonstrate Catalyst or to discuss your registry’s needs.
Please come and say hello (or kia ora).
Joel Foster (Founder & Chief Executive), Chuck Moore (Founder & Finance Director) and Justin Hygate (Consultant) our CRF ‘envoy’ and all the team at Foster Moore – The Registry People.
Foster Moore are delighted to celebrate the launch of the new online Companies Registry for Samoa.
The new companies registry was launched by the Ministry of Commerce in Samoa on Monday 18 February 2013. Continue reading
The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law - UNCITRAL’s Working Group held a meeting in Vienna in December 2012.
The meeting saw delegates from a number of countries, international organizations and non-governmental organisations, work on the preparation of a comprehensive guide to help countries create and operate a modern secured transactions registry (the “Registry Guide”).
Ideally, countries using the Registry Guide will also have modernised their secured transactions laws in a manner consistent with the UNCITRAL Secured Transactions Guide, a project that UNCITRAL completed in 2007 (the “Secured Transactions Guide“), but the Registry Guide can also be used by countries that have not made use of the Secured Transactions Guide.
Foster Moore follow the developments from the Working Group and the Guide with interest to ensure that our Catalyst ST is compliant and based on genuine best practice.
The Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia (ITSA) have launched the first part of their new suite of online services. Foster Moore are delighted to be ITSA’s partner in the development of a new generation of services for the Australian business community and ITSA stakeholders.
2013 has started well and truly and the team at Foster Moore is knee-deep in new registry projects. Our work in Papua New Guinea and Samoa is well underway.
Our Canadian projects are progressing nicely and there are a range of exciting prospects just waiting for a Foster Moore Catalyst registry.
Wishing all of our clients, friends and wider registry family Happy Holidays. Thanks for your support over a busy and fun 2012. We look forward to making the world a better place – one registry at a time in 2013.
In 2010 Foster Moore configured and delivered our Catalyst – Registry Manager product to the Solomon Islands as part of an Asian Development Bank (ADB) project to reform company law and the companies registry.
Foster Moore is delighted to welcome Pete Yates to our management team as Technical Services Group Manager.
There seems to be change afoot in the world of corporate registries and how they hold and display addresses for directors. A small change at this point but one we expect to gather momentum.
Historically registries required companies to provide full residential address for directors. The addresses are normally required upon incorporation, at the time of lodgment of an annual return and frequently trigger the lodgment of an update when the director changes residential address.
This address is commonly then entered into the public register. In a modern world where public registries are easily accessed online this publication of private information seems surprisingly out of step with individual privacy.
There are not too many places where one can go and find the private address of individuals online so easily.
The United Kingdom changed this requirement with the introduction of the Companies Act 2006. UK Companies have to keep two registers of directors. The first is a register of directors, which will contain all the directors’ particulars except for the residential address and the second a register of directors’ residential addresses.
Companies must inform Companies House of both addresses for each of its directors. Companies House puts the service address on the public register, but keep the residential address secure and only allows certain people to see it.
Where the two addresses are the same for a director, the company can enter the service address in the register of directors, and simply enter “same as service address” in the register of directors’ residential addresses.
Corporations Canada, the Federal companies register has recently introduced a similar amendment to the Canada Business Corporations Act, the Canada Not-for-Profit Corporations Act and the Canada Cooperatives Act.
The amendment enables the provision of an address for service other than a residential address for directors.
Corporations Canada advises that an address for service is an address where legal documents can be delivered, and must be accepted by the director or someone on their behalf, and where an acknowledgement or delivery receipt can be provided, if required. As with the UK an address for service can be the residential address of the director or a business address.
There are two advantages we can see in this approach. One obviously relates to privacy, it allows directors to keep their residential address private and off public registers.
The second relates to integrity. It is clear that in order to keep residential addresses private (for legitimate reasons such as personal safety) directors have been known to provide other addresses. With an approach such as that taken by the UK directors are more likely to provide accurate information to the registry when they know how this information will be used, that is the residential address will be held privately by the registry and the address for service displayed to the world.
The UK provisions make it clear that the directors’ residential address can be share with specified agencies, typically enforcement agencies.
Modern registries make it easy to manage these lodgments. Catalyst BR allows either the director or their agent along with the registry to update the changes and manage the privacy and visibility rules simply.
We expect that more registries will adopt provisions similar to those in the UK and Canada.
