I found a new new site indexing UK company records based on a snapshot taken on 4th March 2010 which includes names of their directors but not their addresses. This is searchable by the person’s name.
we bought the Companies House appointment snapshot and dropped it into a quick little searchable symfony app so you can browse the data – it’s the directors and secretaries of every UK company, cross-linked.”
The Constitution Act, 1867, S. 92 (11) Awards the provinces the power to allow “The Incorporation of Companies with Provincial Objects”.
You will notice the term “Provincial Objects”. This means that the federal government may also allow the formation of corporations with federal or national objects. The territories may also form corporations.
This means that in Canada, 10 provinces, 3 territories, and the federal government have mechanisms to form corporations.
The following articles have links to company registers that I am often asked about.
The following two articles are required reading for anyone who must search by company or product name.
Furthermore, the Official Google Blog post titled Showing More Results from a Domain, indicates that their algorithm is intended to show searchers more results from a single domain where evidence exits that there is a “strong user interest in a particular domain.” They also note that the last few results (on a search results page set to show 10 results) are from other domains to preserve diversity in the results.
This has serious implications for anybody doing due diligence research as many derogatory entries in the search engine database will not appear without additional search terms. It also means that search results set to 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 per page may give radically different proportions of search results when sorted by domain.
Finding EU material on companies can be tricky; Search Europa is a good starting point before starting more complicated searches.
Every company or individual person who files a disclosure with the SEC receives an unique ID, the Central Index Key (CIK). You can use the CIK to search for company or fund filings on EDGAR .
The CIK Look-up has only one input field in the interface entitled Company, however, it will work for a person’s name also.
Here is my advice on researching Belize corporations.
First, check the IBC struck-off list at:
The International Business Companies Registry is located in the Marina Towers building in Belize City. A competent & experienced staff is available to help you.
Marina Towers, Suite 201
Newtown Barracks
Belize City, Belize
Central America
Telephone numbers: 501-223-5108 / 223-5120 / 224-4701
Fax number: 501-223-5124
E-mail address: ibc@btl.net
Contact Person: Ms. Katherine Haylock, Deputy Registrar
Normally you must travel to Belmopan, the capital, to visit the Companies’ Registry and request a computerized name search of all existing Belizean company names, which takes a few minutes to complete. however, a request can also be done by telephone or fax at a fee of BZE 50
The contact information is as follows:
Belize Companies and Corporate Affairs Registry
Ground Floor Garden City Hotel
Mountain View Boulevard
Belmopan City, Cayo District
Belize Central America
TEL: 822- 0421/ 822-0531
FAX: 822- 0422
http://www.belizecompaniesregistry.gov.bz/
Belizean laws allow for the following categories of business ownership:
* Private Companies
* Limited Liability Partnership
* Limited Life Companies
* Joint Ventures and Cooperatives
* Partnership
* Sole Proprietor
* Public Investment Companies
* International Business Companies
* Trust Funds
Almost all offshore or foreign businesses use the International Business Company or Trust forms, sometimes in combination.
The General Registry now offers a search feature that allows registered users to search online for Companies Information.
Jon Lowder at CI Marketplace writes that Lenny Fuld highlights the value of the contrarians in our midst when he explains why he’d like to meet a character in the Madoff mess:
No matter how certain, how comfortable you may be with an answer, a popular answer, an answer that comforts or confirms, you need to pay attention to … the minority and taking them seriously.
If you don’t like the content of a minority opinion, then find out if it is right through independent and impartial research!
Panama recently put online their company registry. You can now retrieve the names of the current directors of every Panamanian company, as well as all the company’s filings themselves (minutes of company meetings, details of shareholdings, ownership, certificates of incorporation etc. etc.).
Nice, but you can only search by the name of the company. If you want to find somebody who is dodging tax or doing something else dubious, you really need to search by director’s name.
This tool fixes that problem. I’ve scraped all 600,000 company records, going back 30 years, and indexed by directors.
Litigation may tell you what the target company doesn’t want you to know.
Here are five things to look for when reviewing a company’s legal entanglements:
Subsidiaries seem to be the bane of my existence lately. The following story is getting old.
A company has what seems like a good idea. It gets people to invest.
The intellectual property (IP) is registered to, or transferred to, a subsidiary, which is then spun-off. The newly independent company then transfers the IP to an off-shore company. The off-shore company then licenses the IP to the original firm.
“IDEA” Will Make Company and Fund Information Interactive
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox today unveiled the successor to the agency’s 1980s-era EDGAR database, which will give investors far faster and easier access to key financial information about public companies and mutual funds.
The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications. Based on a completely new architecture being built from the ground up, it will it first supplement and then eventually replace the EDGAR system. The decision to replace EDGAR marks the SEC’s transition from collecting forms and documents to making the information itself freely available to investors to give them better and more up-to-date financial disclosure in a form they can readily use.”
Starting a competitive intelligence research project, an investigation, or due diligence research usually entails a detailed look at the corporate filings, share structure, and accounts of the target or subject company.
On the island of Great Britain, there are two separate registries, one for England and Wales, and another for Scotland. Both of these are operated by Companies House. The accounts and filings for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland take the same format.
On the island of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment of the Northern Ireland Government, (DETINI) houses the corporate filings and accounts. Corporate filings in the Republic of Ireland may be obtained online from the Companies Registration Office.
On the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey the corporate filings are handled at the Jersey Financial Services Commission and the Guernsey Registry. Jersey and Guernsey are tax havens, and companies incorporated there do not normally file accounts.
The Isle of Man is a tax haven, and companies incorporated there do not normally file accounts. The Companies Registry holds corporate filings, and is part of the Financial Supervision Commission. Continue reading ‘Corporate Filing Searches on the British Islands’
Franchises identify themselves in the marketplace by using a common name and trademark. Each user of the name purchases a franchise which allows the franchisee the right to use the name. This is where the fun begins.
The franchisee will be a company or partnership with rights to use the name. In Canada, the right to use the name will normally be filed as a Business Name Registration. This allows a person, company, or partnership to operate under a name other than his or its proper name.
Now imagine you have a franchise at 123 Main Street in some Ontario town or city. How do you distinguish it from all the other franchises using the same business name?
In Ontario, OnCorp will allow you to view a list of all the business name registrations along with the recorded addresses.
A mouse click in the check-box next to the registration with the correct address will get you the Business Name Registration, and that will tell you the name of the company or partnership that owns that franchise location.