European countries begin taking down public company registers after ruling
ft.com
ft.com
For a long time, Chinese companies have been buying controlling / major interest in European companies and then sucking out the IP, etc. back to China, and often fully killing the European entity. [1]
It's very common for a core technology to just be a firm with a few hundred people doing a very specific thing, which is useful in itself, but also has access to big portions of the specs/designs/IP of which it's being integrated into.
Think: Advanced aircraft engines, ASML's EUV machines, weapon systems, etc.
The same actually happens in reverse too with aggressively one-sided joint "partnerships" like when China essentially played the world's high speed rail manufacturers against each other to steal their IP. [2]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/03/639636532/chinese-companies-g...
[2] http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/08/07/digestion-and-re-innovatio...
It is an interesting situation where capitalism makes certain operations against it really, really cheap for an adversary. Can markets price in this sort of thing? Is there some sort of "tag" a company can/should get to make it vastly more expensive to an adversary nation to acquire? Kind of like a reverse carbon credit.
Regarding the private IP holder who sold. It was certainly in the financial interest of the IP holder to do the deal! But are we not allowed to criticize the sellers of these companies, who sold to China of their own free will, with some knowledge, presumably, of what would happen? But it was a good exit! Most people aren't so lucky. Is that the correct way to look at it? Do individuals who engage in deals like this deserve criticism for an ethical breach, if not a legal one?
The problem is that for too long the bankers/C-suite crowd have lobbied their gov'ts to turn a blind eye to this behavior, but now we're realizing that this order cannot hold, and we must finally begin defending ourselves.
Europe is under more pressure than the US because they're more export driven, and their biggest partner is usually China. They buy a lot of German cars, French/Italian luxury goods, etc.
Whereas the US is actually China's biggest demand source, so it's flipped, and slowly firms I'm seeing are diversifying production throughout Asia and beyond to reduce Chinese risk from their supply chains.
> China Exports to United States was US$577.13 Billion during 2021
> European Union Imports from China was US$557.31 Billion during 2021
I believe this is pretty even so invalidates a bit your point.
> European Union Exports to China was US$260.61 Billion during 2021
> In 2021, the value of the U.S. exports to China amounted to approximately 151.07 billion U.S. dollars
This one holds more truth, it's a US$ 90B difference between exports from the USA and the EU into China.
This makes it easier for the US to make a consistent policy to China compared to the high variance of interests in European countries, which consistently are used by outsiders to drive wedges in between the major EU states. The US doesn't allow (in theory...) states/cities to be able to conduct foreign policy, so they don't have as much leverage.
TL;DR: I stand by my statements on US being China's largest trade partner.
I don't understand what you mean by this, it's a single trading block, if required the EU as a whole will implement tariffs because if each country could pick and choose then the whole free-trade thing would be pointless, it'd be an eternal race to the bottom for which country would offer a better agreement to trade with China.
Or do you mean that because the EU as a bloc has different interests in foreign policy that then it can't take a single unified decision if needed?
In that case, the USA surely has states influencing its foreign policy depending on their economy of exports to foreign countries, it's normal politics to defend the interests of your voting base and if those are dependent on exports to a specific country of course there's pressure on the Federal government's foreign policy...
So while there are plenty of state-based influence games being played in the US, they aren't as big an issue for the US vs. the EU.
TL;DR: There are some similarities, but on balance Europe is less united and countries like China/Russia make use of them well.
Colloquially (and colorfully) called "brain rape".
This has a long and highly profitable history in Silicon Valley.
Anyone involved in M&A discussions needs to be taught how to work in this environment.
The joke was on them. It was a terrible idea!
But seriously, what kind of scumbags are these people?
What is the purpose of this China narrative? Is it to blame others and appear childish or to provoke more racism?
That sounds like wishful thinking, considering it hasn't done a damn thing to stop it. Shell companies still exist, UK politicians still hide their money. So I call BS.
On the other hand, I didn't appreciate having my name plastered all over the place simply because I was on the board for a charity I "worked" for.
And why shouldn’t your role as a board member of a charity be public knowledge? Do you disagree with the charity’s mission or something? Why’d you agree to serve?
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house
> And why shouldn’t your role as a board member of a charity be public knowledge? Do you disagree with the charity’s mission or something? Why’d you agree to serve?
I have personal reasons, and that's the point; they're personal. I shouldn't have to air them out to get vindication. More to the point, why _should_ it be public knowledge? It certainly doesn't help with any of this money laundering or shell account business, I've seen proof of that first hand.
Transparent ownership and transparent management certainly does help with money laundering and shell companies. What good is a shell company to launder money with if its ownership can be pierced easily with publicly available information? I’m sure this statement hits very close to home for you given the fact that everyone knows you were involved with <insert charity you are no longer involved with> simply by googling the relevant charity. Do you think a drug lord out of South America is going to be sitting on a board or owning a company if they can be found out just be googling or sending in some paperwork? Maybe, but if they’re smart they’ll know that serving on the board of a charity will plaster their name all over the place and they will opt out.
The only thing I think is important enough to keep is this though:
> What good is a shell company to launder money with if its ownership can be pierced easily with publicly available information? I’m sure this statement hits very close to home for you given the fact that everyone knows you were involved with <insert charity you are no longer involved with> simply by googling the relevant charity.
I can't tell if you're being satirical, sarcastic, or actually implying I was involved in fraud at that place because that's the only possible reason I could have for not wanting my name there any more.
In case you're serious; there are reasons other than bad ones for people to do this. Not everyone is an arsehole, and not not everyone is out to screw other people over.
I guess that's why all this irks me so much. We're again punishing the 99% of normal people with normal reasons, for the 1% of arseholes in the world. _We're structuring our society around laws for the bad minority_.
I think we can do better.
Why shouldn't you be identified? Especially charities need to operate openly and honestly. Having the ability to hide their board makes it significantly easier to not reveal conflicts of interests and shady dealings.
So bad that you didn't like it. But I see no reason to hide such information.
As of 2024 private entities in the US will need to report ownership to FinCEN though it still won’t be available to the public.
Honestly, if Elon manages to take down Twitter, at least enough so that journalists and bloggers stop using it as a plattform and source for stories, it can only be a net positive.
Readers might want to read both.
This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
After my reply, I stopped getting any response from HN. I wrote 2 more mails, but to no avail. This was about 2 weeks ago.
How to proceed?
That's about all I can tell you without more information, since I don't remember the thread you're referring to.
Where are European reporters?
Maybe because it's not that big of a story? The ruling only says that the register can't be public, not that the register itself is illegal. Law enforcement and the people actually involved seizing assets still have access to it. For what's it's worth I became aware of this a week ago because I read this blog: https://raytodd.blog/2022/11/22/eu-aml-directive-the-provisi...
The same avaits UBO registers and public company databases if we do not oppose this.
On the other hand, many countries have strong principles regarding freedom of speech and data transparency. In the country where I'm from, for example, you can easily look up the full name and address of any citizen on multiple online services, since this data is fundamentally open from multiple government sources.
When it comes to protecting the data of private citizens not owning a company, I'm actually more inclined to see that people think this is weird, but I personally still think it's a valuable asset to keeping our society open, being able to see where people legally claim their residence is and so on. There are still mechanisms in place for protected identities that can be used when necessary.
However, if you own a company, my line of thought is that you almost start crossing into the "public person" argument. If you want to prioritize your privacy, that's fine, but if you start posting things on Instagram under your own name and you become a celebrity, you have to accept that the amount of criticism and exposure you may get increases due to the choice you made. In my mind, the same thing applies to some extent if you start a company.
If you start a company, you have elected to enter the "stage" so to speak of the common market, and you are choosing to become a more prominent figure in society than you otherwise would have been. So in my mind, it doesn't really make sense to argue for the privacy rights of company owners over the privacy rights of "regular" individuals.
Another thing is that owning a company is, in most cases when it's a "limited" one at least, a privilege given to you where you can separate your personal debts and responsibilities from that of the company. I also think it makes sense that this privilege should not be without cost -- you are already enjoying the legal benefit of being separated from your company, I think being public and transparent about who "you" are that's enjoying this benefit is the least we could do to maintain transparency in that responsibility-removing system.
The latter is, in my mind, definitely a privilege, because society has given you a "proxy" to more freely do business without having to worry about personal responsibility. If we're talking about a company where you have personal liability, it's no more a privilege than having a regular job is.
The differences between these two types of companies are very important, and leads to very different consequences.
This is also why in under any context companies cannot be people because their very existence is a privilege granted by society and it is exactly why they want to be treated like a person -- so they can enjoy rights.
These public registers are data mined and all the contact information on them. That data is then sold while compiled with other information. Ultimately you get a deluge of advertisement spam.
I always found it odd how the government enabled this spam. It's probably not a big deal, especially when it comes to larger companies, but every small business is listed there too (if it's the type of register I'm thinking about).
This is not necessarily surprising. The states no longer need the public. As long as they have access to the info, they find public access irrelevant.
Democracy is, imho, not a thing anymore. We are under ultimate statism.
Of course the absurdity is that not that long ago there was much handwringing about the privacy implications of publishing the contact details of the domain owner for .de-domains (now it's no longer publicly accessible), there was the whole infamous brouhaha about Google Streetview, but requiring every private Tom, Dick or Harry to put up a full imprint is apparently perfectly normal and just the way it is done.
As a consumer, I really appreciate the imprint law. I don't do business with websites that omit it.
How can I find the beneficial owners of a Cayman, BVI, Jersey or Mauritius entity?
Do I want to know? Do I want others to know about myself?
At some point, money is no longer about consumption, it's a form of power. We should be able to identify those with power.
No, one is an asset the other a liability. Most peoples’ liabilities are recorded on a credit report.
If you don't like what your fellow think of you for owning foo corp because they don't approve of soylent green or cigarettes then sell. If you are secure in your convictions and your financial choices hold. Privacy here holds little virtue especially when is so clearly doomed to only hold for the rich. If we are going to largely live in a transparent society as seems so very likely I see no virtue in privacy for the rich.
Publishing all owners of X is not the same as publishing all what the owners own.
And fo
Who's fault? People don't go start companies in Dubai to hide the UBOs (btw: when you open a company in Dubai they do KYC/AML and asks who the UBOs are... Dubai ain't the Bahamas). People go start companies in Dubai instead of the EU because both taxation and paperwork in the EU has gone off the rails.
More than 99% of the people whose information is listed in these registries are not corrupt public officials, Russian oligarchs, or [insert person you dislike here].
Public UBO registries do not strike a good balance between protecting the privacy of honest business owners and exposing corruption or whatever.
People who need access to the UBO (for example because they are required, by law, to do KYC/AML on their customers) can still access it.
It's about restricting public access.
> Public UBO registries do not strike a good balance between protecting the privacy of honest business owners and exposing corruption or whatever.
This.
What they _do_ achieve however is getting your name irreversibly splattered around just for helping a charity as a "board member".
Why not? Generally EU countries do not like public lists of PII, why should business owners be treated differently?
What legitimate use do you have for this information?
What actual use do you have for this information? Beyond “it’s nice to know”?
Is it not sufficient that you have a service address for the legal entity in case you need to sue it?
A service address isn't sufficient to, for example, easily piece together that one private owner has quietly purchased 70% of some town's resources, especially if they've done so via a collection of shells. And most legal actions against such abuse generally start grassroots; regulators aren't aware there's a problem until people complain.
Hiding information from the public makes it harder to notice abuse.
Flip the script: when an individual has incorporated and is enjoying the legal protections of being a corporate entity, why do they need their name hidden? What value in the society of granting them that privilege when they are enjoying legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by all members of society?
The real question you have to answer is “Why is it necessary for company ownership to be public information?”
> A service address isn't sufficient to, for example, easily piece together that one private owner has quietly purchased 70% of some town's resources, especially if they've done so via a collection of shells
What’s wrong here? Even with a perfect UBO registry that private owner could just get together with a couple of their buddies and divvy up that 70%.
What legal action are you going to take? Owning 70% of a town’s resources is generally not against the law.
It's not. They carry a driver's license and law enforcement can reference their name by license plate.
This is how company ownership information should be treated too.
(This is not about the parent comment—I'm just posting a reply here for clarity because the other post is already several days old.)
Another is that I prefer to (try to) persuade users that it's in their interest not to abuse HN. HN is only interesting because there is a somewhat* higher quality of discussion and content here. When you post aggressively, violate the site guidelines, and so on, you're damaging the ecosystem and contributing to destroying HN as an interesting place. That is not in your interest.
I assume that you wouldn't drop a lit match in a dry forest, or dump engine oil in a mountain lake, or throw trash in a park that you enjoy. Why do the equivalent here?
(* I don't want to overstate that—a lot of posts also suck. But it's all relative, and there aren't many places on the internet to have the sort of discussion that, at its best, goes on here.)
- To check for conflicts of interest
- To prevent corruption
https://www.transparency.org/en/news/how-public-beneficial-o...
Disclosing their personal information seems like an incredibly poorly targeted policy, motivated by little more than the misconception that you’re hurting the “rich and powerful”, when you’re just hurting the middle class and adding yet another barrier to people trying to start businesses (already stupidly difficult in most of Europe).
I have no interest in being a public person, to any degree whatsoever. Not because I want to do shady things, but because there are objectively no advantages to having your privacy taken away.
Creating a successful business is fundamentally connected to publicity, and if I succeed in creating publicity for my product/business/company I inevitably create publicity for myself. As things are those two things are inseparably connected. I personally hate it.
This is a far fetched, but the thought that someone innovates or creates something of value, and the payback may be that people want to kill them or kidnap their family because it happens to be a vaccine, or paparazzi hound them for the rest of their life because the media wants to cash in on them just sucks.
While I of course don't expect any of that to ever happen to me, I have thought about what if it happens. If someone is not willing to take that risk their only alternative is to be someone else's workhorse until retirement. It seems like a really bad and arbitrary filter (not the only one by any means) for who is and isn't able to take a shot at building something for themselves.
It doesn't really make sense to me that your willingness to give up your privacy is this connected to one of the biggest decisions you can make in life to grow and build meaningful stuff.
So would you like to a live in a country where the government can mandate a vaccine and you have no way to find out who owns the VAXXPROD company, whose vaccines are mandated? What if the owner by pure coincidence is the nice of the Vax Minister?
On the other hand, how will John Doe's privacy be affected if it was public information that he owns Flush Pty Ltd, as long as Flush Pty Ltd is not doing anything of public interest?
Obviously, would get into the realm of public interest if John Doe also owned Flush-A, Flush-B, ... Flush-Z Pty Ltds, and these were purportedly competing for the tenders to install toilets in the City Council Building. Or would you rather keep this information private?
Your words, correct?
My claim is that whenever you do something of high consequence, it is safer for you and the society to have your privacy taken away. (or the link between whatever you do and your name be public knowledge)
*The vaccine produced by an anonymous scientist*
*The car crashtest and certification site operated by an anonymous owner*
*The airplane designed by an anonymous engineer*
Talking about airplanes. An air traffic controller in Switzerland is a largely anonymous job. But after causing an aviation accident (a rather high-consequence deed) it would have been safer for the controller, if he and the police assumed that the air traffic controller's name and location were public knowledge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev
The information that John Doe operates XYZ Pty Ltd does not affect their privacy too much, but if either John Doe or XYZ do or even consider doing something of high consequence, they better know that the link is public.
there are objectively no advantages to having the link between your name and your high-impact activity be hidden.
The discussion you seemingly want to have you can have plenty of times elsewhere in the thread, so why instead ignore everything I said and pivot the conversation to the one thing I said multiple times now wasn't what I was talking about?
It is perfectly valid and I appreciate that you want to talk about the bigger picture of this change, and how it affects different aspects of society. That conversation should go along with conversations about individual experiences and expectations and interests, not happen in their stead.
https://www.transparency.org/en/news/how-public-beneficial-o...
And that is before we get to the part UBO's definition ( which is not super aligned with US vesion ) and that it seems like a recipe for completely avoidable confusion.
I get why the investigator is upset ( "I used to be able to tell just by clicking a button - now I will need to ask the customer for supporting documentation" ).
By incorporating, I am publishing my identity (but not my private home address) in return for being granted a legal entity to do business as and which I can control and use to store surplus value or debt. Controlling the company acts as a political power multiplier, especially if I own multiple companies, layer them or use them to exert influence on other companies.
It's entirely fair that the public should have access to this information about me although there needs to be a balance between this right to transparency and my right to privacy, e.g. exposing my home address could put me in personal danger so I have a stronger interest to keep that private as long as my ownership of different companies can be correlated.
Consider that even Germany, which is one of the strictest countries in the EU when it comes to privacy, has implemented the directive[1].
[1]: The directive the article refers to is this one, in Germany it is implemented as the Transparenzregister: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
The problem is, as it always has been, that there are people and entities, who are above such laws ( usually that short list includes politicians that write them ).
I guess what I really was is clear rules of engagement. We don't have that now at all.
<< (but not my private home address)
I am admittedly ignorant of Germany's laws in that area, but in US use of dba with owner's real address is not that uncommon ( although that is a slightly different type of entity to begin with ). That said, US is its own animal anyway.
<< exposing my home address could put me in personal danger so I have a stronger interest to keep that private as long as my ownership of different companies can be correlated.
I could support that argument, but while one database may not have your address listed, correlation ( and likely finding that address ) is likely trivial. Privacy is only privacy, when it actually works. Window dressing to make a legally sound argument defeats its purpose to me.
From the article:
"The court’s ruling puts it at odds with the UK, which was one of the first countries in the world to introduce a public beneficial ownership register in 2016."
The link provided belongs to UK government, which is no longer part of EU, which effectively only proves that some countries took steps like that.
edit: missing verb
Because if it is, then I'm glad the EU at least is getting rid of things like that.
There are no Elsevier-style data brokers in this business yet.
Personal anecdote:
I had my company registered to my home address for 13 years while doing online business where I regularly received threats.
None showed up at my doorsteps in all these years to insult me in person while literally hundreds if not thosands did insult me online.
IMO these luxemburgish barons from the FT story are not physically afraid either, they just want to hide their dirty money in the dark.
For an example, here's Bosch in Germany. Scroll down to "Netzwerk" and you see a relationship graph down to the individual level showing subsidiaries, managing directors and such: https://www.northdata.de/Robert+Bosch+GmbH,+Gerlingen/Amtsge...
If that list seems incomplete, the page also links to all known direct subsidiaries and indirect subsidiaries. This is in addition to available financial and historical data.
- exposing my home address could put me in personal danger so I have a stronger interest to keep that private
BUT
- as long as my ownership of different companies can be correlated
These are conflicting interests (my interest in privacy, the public's interest in transparency) that need to be weighed and Germany traditionally favors privacy in most cases.
The Transparenzregister requires registration and only permits limited access to members of the general public. But it exists and the information is out there. That is important.
It's really hard to convey the notion of European (and especially German) ideas of privacy to Americans given that even California's privacy laws are fundamentally different.
I suppose it's similar to trying to explain US gun laws or freedom of speech to Europeans. There may be superficial similarities in what these legally mean in practice but the underlying cultural ideas and origins are very different (e.g. the material fact that there are more guns in the US than gun owners has very important ramifications: even with public support, implementing Australia-style gun collection would take decades if not longer).
Edit: I checked companies house. No information on ownership at all. Only 2 directors are named. One is the CEO, the other is our accounting firm (the firm, not an individual there).
Either people are very misinformed, or "it's public" means "it's only public if you want to make it public"...
Looks like some countries already closed these registers down:
https://www.kvk.nl/english/ordering-products-from-the-busine...
> Minister Kaag of the Ministry of Finance has asked KVK to temporarily stop its information services for the UBO register. This decision was taken following a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Read the Ministry of Finance letter (in Dutch).
Of course, this list may well just be other companies that are overseas and you can't drill down into their owners.. ;-)
a new company won't have one at all
And this is a crucial difference. UBOs (Ultimate Beneficial Owner) registries list, well, the ultimate beneficial owner(s), the person at then end of chain. See examples in twitter thread [0] (already linked a couple of times).
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
If you're in the UK, it's entirely possible it never got implemented. It adds to an earlier directive from 2015 that didn't include the provision requiring the data to be public:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...