The Legal Committee spent a great deal of time during the past year chewing over the issue of corporate governance, Legal Committee Chairman Tim Gallie said. The principle of the need for improved corporate governance is widely accepted, but finding the most appropriate way to achieve that has been no simple matter.

"We believe that ultimately Hong Kong can only aspire to global levels of governance with major changes of attitude, particularly by the controlling shareholders and boards of directors of listed companies. And we generally believe that some increase in legal obligations will be necessary in order to achieve that," he said.

But the question of how far legal obligations should go, and how far the regulatory authorities should be the driving or deciding force on the introduction and improvement of codes of governance, is a very much more difficult subject, he added.

Earlier this year the General Committee accepted an executive recommendation -- in which the Legal Committee was instrumental -- that a senior Chamber working group on corporate governance be established, on the basis that corporate governance has implications that go far wider than legal issues, and that co-ordinated Chamber wide responses, and initiatives, are desirable.

"I personally very much hope that the Chamber will make a major contribution to the balanced development of corporate governance in Hong Kong, and I believe that the Chamber is ideally placed to perform that role," Mr Gallie said.

On the issue of legal education and training, the committee expressed its views on the consultants report, which were consolidated in a letter signed by the Chamber Chairman, and expanded into wider views on education in Hong Kong.

The committee also dealt with several issues on the new copyright law, including the clarification of employer liability for illegal software use, recommendations for changes in the law on parallel imports, and discussion of reproduction rights in respect of newspaper and magazine articles.

"We looked at a new government attempt at a meaningful Companies (Corporate Rescue) Bill," Mr Gallie said. "Unfortunately, it failed to meet the views and recommendations of reconstruction practitioners as to viable measures to improve the prospective achievement of a rescue, for the shared benefit of all interest groups."

A submission on major concerns raised in the committee on the Securities and Futures Bill was also made. But Mr Gallie said the Legal Committee also ran into the same difficulty as Legco of how to tackle 1,000 pages of draft legislation and pick out the points of concern from an unobjectionable bulk of consolidation and improvements.

Finally, Mr Gallie said the committee was continuing to look for new members, but conceded that the time consuming nature of the worked made many people shy away from joining.