"Interesting" companies of the week: the JD Aries Development Limited companies

Having just reached company number 3,000,000 in Hong Kong, we were surprised to see multiple companies with very similar names registered on the same day very soon afterwards: JD Aries Development XXXIII (HK) Limited, JD Aries Development XXXIV (HK) Limited, and so on up to JD Aries Development XXXX (HK) Limited. For those who are wondering about the sequence of capital letters in the name, they are Roman numerals, i.e. numbers written with letters of the preeminent Western alphabet, where each letter represents a number, and a basic rule of thumb is that a sequence of letters represents their sum. I equals 1 and X equals ten, so XXXIII equals 33 and XXXX equals 40, implying that JD Aries Development XXXX (HK) Limited is the 40th company in this sequence.

(Do note that the standard way to write 40 in Roman numerals is actually XL, an example of where the rule of thumb is broken. Only 4 companies in Hong Kong have ever been registered with the sequence “xxxx” in their name, and only once as Roman numerals. One of those companies is the sadly departed company number 1724338, variously called Urban Wealth Trading Limited 都盛貿易有限公司, XXXX Limited 爻爻有限公司, and the audacious 2.718281828459045235360287471352662497757247 Limited 2點718281828459045235360287471352662497757247有限公司. If you want to be the first to know who the shareholders and directors of this company were, it’ll only cost you US$25, and we’ll then share the information freely.)

Using our data platform (get in touch for a demo) we were able to easily ascertain the following about JD Aries Development companies in Hong Kong:

• All companies with “JD Aries” in the name are in the form “JD Aries Development [Roman numerals] Limited” or “JD Aries Development [Roman numerals] (HK) Limited”.
• The first JD Aries company registered was JD Aries Development VII Limited on 8th November 2019. Yes, if you’re keeping up, that is supposedly the 7th in the series… But there are none before it in the Hong Kong Companies Registry. It was also the only JD Aries registered that day.
• That was the only, unremarkable, JD Aries, until it was joined by 4 more on 20th December 2019, from JD Aries Development IX Limited to JD Aries Development XII Limited (i.e. 9 to 12). Why no 8? Is it too lucky?
• Again there was a pause, until 13 to 15 on 24th February 2020 (with “(HK)” in the name for the first time), then 16 to 20 on 15th May 2020 (without “(HK)” again), followed by more batches in September, October and December (all back with “(HK)”) with no more missing numbers.
• Apart from JD Aries 40, the Roman numerals are in the standard format, e.g. XXIV for 24.

The growth in the companies’ formation over time, none of which have yet been dissolved, can be seen in the graph of cumulative count below, reaching a current 33 JD Aries companies:

There’s no indication online of what “JD Aries” could be… If you want to fund finding out who is behind these companies, it’ll only cost you US$25.