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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

It isn't now is it? I work at small UK Ltd company. I know roughly who our owners are. But it isn't public information beyond what we choose to publish.

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"...

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Have you tried searching Companies House for the Ltd?

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/

Just tried it. No information on ownership there. The only information is our accountants address and the name of the CEO. Zero information about our true owner or significant investors...

Fair enough. I guess if the company is not publicly listed there's not much reason to have ownership public. Don't really know though.

I'm not sure what you mean: All directors, shareholders and accounts are publicly available on the Companies House website.

All directors are, but are all shareholders? I just did a quick check and it only seemed to list people with significant control, not all shareholders. Unless there’s an area I’ve missed.

Yeah you might be right, only bigger shareholders are listed.

That's accounting speak for true ownership. But they do get around this listing some legal entity in a tax haven.

Yes. However, you need to hunt a bit by going into the "returns." Go into "Filing history" then tick "Confirmation statements / Annual returns." Then skip any "confirmation statements" that have "no updates." Eventually you will reach an "Annual return" with "full list of shareholders." This document will include all shareholders and is true for any Ltd company I've looked up in recent years. They just don't republish it every year.

Of course, this list may well just be other companies that are overseas and you can't drill down into their owners.. ;-)

annual returns were dropped several years ago

a new company won't have one at all

The name changed but confirmation statements are basically the same thing, except if there are no changes, they just confirm prior information. You can go back to whatever that prior information is. For companies formed after 2016, full shareholder information will be in the incorporation documents under "Initial Shareholdings."

> Of course, this list may well just be other companies that are overseas and you can't drill down into their owners.. ;-)

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).

[0] https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058

They're not in our case. No owners are listed at all in fact. The only details are the CEO and our accountant (a company not an individual) as directors...

https://e-justice.europa.eu/38590/EN/beneficial_ownership_re...

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).

AFAIK in most EU countries you can easily look up owners and also tax data. For example in Slovakia I can query any company name and see the "owners" with their address and also the revenue and other tax related data for each year.

The directive in question is this one from 2018:

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...

I guess it depends on the country? In Germany (and a couple of other countries that I know of), the owners of a company are public.

You have to click on people > persons with significant control tab.Those are the owners.

Interesting. It's public information in India which I thought would have inherited from the UK.

I think the parent post is wrong.

It is too in the UK. The parent may not be aware of the public Companies House register which makes this information available to anyone.

Is the UK bound by the CJEU anymore?

Not since Brexit.

You can check opencorporate for that info.

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