What is company information?

Company information, defined

Company information is the set of facts that identify, describe and account for a legal business entity: its registered name, where and when it was incorporated, who controls it, how it is structured, what it is permitted to do, what financial position it reports, and what record of conduct or non-conduct it has built up over time.

It is the corporate equivalent of the personal information held about an individual, but with two important differences. First, much of it is required to be public. Countries that allow limited-liability incorporation generally do so on condition that the entity discloses enough about itself for third parties to make informed decisions about dealing with it. Second, because a company is a legal construct rather than a person, the boundary between "public" and "private" information runs in a different place than it does for individuals, and that boundary varies materially from one jurisdiction to another.

The practical implication: anyone who deals with companies, as a buyer, seller, lender, investor, regulator, journalist or counterparty, needs to know what company information is available, where to find it, how reliable it is, and what its absence means.

What company information includes

Across jurisdictions, the underlying categories of company information are remarkably consistent. What varies is which categories are public, which are private, and which are not collected at all.

Identity and registration

The legal name, registration number, country and date of incorporation, registered office, entity type (limited company, partnership, sole trader, public company, foundation, cooperative), and the company's current legal status: active, dormant, in liquidation, dissolved, struck off. These are the foundational facts and are almost universally public.

Officers, directors and authorised signatories

The people who legally represent the company (directors, managing officers, company secretaries, authorised signatories) together with the scope of their authority. Most jurisdictions publish this; a handful do not.

Ownership and beneficial ownership

Shareholders or members on the one hand, and ultimate beneficial owners, the human individuals who ultimately own or control the company, on the other. The two are not the same. A registered shareholder may be a holding company; the beneficial owner is whichever person sits at the top of that chain. The transparency regime for each varies sharply: some countries publish shareholder lists openly, some require beneficial-owner registers but restrict who can see them, and some publish nothing at all.

Financial information

Filed annual accounts, profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash position and turnover where required. The most rigorous filing regimes (UK, Germany, France, much of the EU) require detailed annual disclosure proportionate to company size; others (most US states for private companies, much of the Middle East and Asia for private entities) require none.

Activities and licences

The business scope or object of the company, what it is registered to do, and any sectoral licences or authorisations it holds (financial-services authorisation, import/export rights, free-zone permissions, regulated-industry approvals). This is increasingly important in cross-border trade, where customs and regulatory regimes care which legal entity is doing the activity.

Credit, risk and adverse records

Court judgements, debt-enforcement records, tax liens, secured-creditor filings (UCC, charges, equivalent registers), insolvency or restructuring history, sanctions matches and any adverse media. This is the layer that turns descriptive company information into a basis for credit and counterparty decisions.

Where company information comes from

Reliable company information comes from a small number of source layers, and the value of any individual fact depends heavily on which layer it came from.

Official corporate registries

The statutory record of legal existence maintained by each jurisdiction. Companies House in the United Kingdom, the Handelsregister in Germany, the Registre du Commerce in France, MCA21 in India, ACRA in Singapore, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System in China, the various Secretaries of State in the United States, and equivalents in every other country with a company-law regime. The corporate registry is the foundation of all company information: a fact recorded there is, by definition, the legally constituted record of that fact.

Public financial filings

Where the jurisdiction requires it, audited or filed accounts deposited with the registry or a dedicated financial-publications register: the Bundesanzeiger in Germany, INFOGREFFE in France, the small-company filing regime in the UK, MCA financial filings in India. Public financial filings are second only to the registry in authoritative weight.

Beneficial-ownership and transparency registers

A more recent layer, driven by international AML and tax-transparency standards. The People with Significant Control register in the UK, the Transparenzregister in Germany, the Registro de Beneficiarios Finales in much of Latin America, the UBO register under Ley 19.484 in Uruguay, the RUBF in Panama. Public access varies: some are fully open, others restricted to those with a demonstrated legitimate interest following a 2022 ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Court, tax and enforcement records

Court judgement registers, tax-debt and tax-compliance records, secured-creditor filings, insolvency notices, regulatory enforcement databases and sanctions lists (OFAC, UK, EU, UN consolidated). These are jurisdiction-specific and rarely aggregated centrally; knowing which register holds what is part of doing the work properly.

In-country investigation

Information that doesn't appear on any public record but can be confirmed by direct enquiry: confirmation that a registered address is a real trading location, banking and trade references, group structure, recent operational status, and material context that the public record misses. A locally compiled report can include research beyond a registry search.

What company information is public, and what isn't

"Public" is a more layered term than it sounds. Company information can be public in several different senses, and these are not interchangeable.

• Publicly filed and freely accessible. Anyone can look it up online without payment or credentials. Companies House in the UK is the canonical example.
• Publicly filed but accessible only on payment. The information is open in principle but the registry charges per extract, common across continental Europe.
• Publicly filed but accessible only on legitimate interest. The information exists in a register but consultation is restricted to financial institutions, journalists, NGOs and similar, typical of beneficial-ownership registers in the EU since 2022.
• Filed with a regulator but not made public at all. The company is required to disclose to the authority but the authority does not publish: UAE beneficial-ownership filings work this way.
• Not required to be filed. The information may exist commercially but the company is under no obligation to disclose it. US private-company financial statements are the headline example.

The legal corollary is that "is company information confidential?" is the wrong question. The right questions are: which piece of information, in which jurisdiction, and by what means of access. Some company information is fully public in any country; some is fully private even where it is collected.

The information our reports contain is drawn from sources the subject company has chosen or been required to make available: public registries, public filings, regulator disclosures, public-record adverse data, and, in the case of investigated reports, information the company itself supplies on request or that is verifiable through local enquiry.

How company information differs by country

Two companies of similar size in different countries can have radically different public footprints. The differences are structural, products of each country's company-law and disclosure regime, and they matter the moment a transaction crosses a border.

High-transparency jurisdictions

The United Kingdom, much of the Nordics, the Netherlands, and several Commonwealth jurisdictions publish detailed company information openly and free of charge. Directors, persons with significant control, registered office, filed accounts, charges and historic filings are all retrievable from a single national register in minutes. The information is current, the website is free, and the data is structured.

Filed-but-paid jurisdictions

France, much of the EU and Switzerland maintain rigorous filing regimes, sometimes more demanding than the UK, but charge for extracts and full filings. The information is reliable; cost and language are the access barriers.

Registry-only jurisdictions

The United States for private companies is the most prominent example. The state Secretary of State will confirm legal existence and basic facts, but private companies are not required to file accounts. Financial information has to come from the company itself, from credit-reporting agencies that hold proprietary trade-payment data, or from investigated enquiry. The registry layer is robust; the financial layer requires more work.

Mixed-access jurisdictions

China, India, Brazil, the UAE and most large emerging markets sit in this category. The registry layer is generally good and increasingly digital, but financial filings, beneficial-ownership records and adverse records are scattered across multiple regulators, presented in the local language, and benefit substantially from local interpretation. Direct in-country research adds material value.

Low-transparency jurisdictions

A small number of offshore and lightly regulated centres maintain minimal public records: registered name and registration number may be all that is publicly available. Beneficial ownership, accounts and substantive corporate activity are not publicly disclosed and must be researched indirectly. This is not necessarily a sign of wrongdoing (many legitimate holding structures sit in these jurisdictions), but it is a sign that public-record information alone will not be enough to make a counterparty decision.

Public-record information vs investigated information

The single most important distinction in commissioned company information is the difference between a public-record extract and a freshly investigated report.

A public-record extract is a search of structured data from official registries and filings: the legal entity facts, current officers, beneficial owners where on register, filed accounts, and any public adverse records. Where the underlying registries are well-maintained and electronically accessible, this can be delivered as an online instant report in minutes. It is fast, comparatively cheap, and entirely sufficient for many decisions, particularly in jurisdictions where the registry layer is genuinely rich.

An investigated report can add what public records cannot. Local agents could confirm whether the registered premises is a real operating site rather than a flexi-desk or mail drop; they may be able to obtain banking and trade references; information may allow them to map the group structure to reveal paths to opaque jurisdictions or to identify undisclosed connected parties; they may translate, contextualise and interpret. For higher-value or higher-risk decisions, and in any jurisdiction where the registry layer is thin, the investigated layer is where the real information is.

Both formats are honest about what they are. A public-record report is exactly that, complete to the extent the public record reaches; it does not pretend to information it does not have. An investigated report goes further but is also explicit about what its agents did and didn't manage to confirm. Buyers who understand the difference get the right tool for the decision.

How to find company information on a specific business

For a company in your home market, the official national register is almost always the first stop. Companies House for a UK company; the Secretary of State of the state of incorporation for a US company; the MCA portal for an Indian company; NECIPS for a Chinese company; ACRA for a Singapore company. The registry will confirm existence, current status, officers, and the filings on record. Our free company registry directory lists the official registry and other public data sources for every country, with a rating of how accessible each one is.

For an overseas company, the same approach in principle, but in practice three problems usually present themselves at once: identifying the correct legal entity (the trading name is rarely the legal name); locating the right registry in a country whose corporate-law structure may be unfamiliar; and interpreting an extract written in the local language and structured around local concepts.

This is what our reports do. You search by company name and country; we identify the legal entity, retrieve the registry record (instantly where the jurisdiction supports it, by investigation otherwise), compile the financial, ownership and risk layers, translate the substance into English, and structure the output consistently across all 200+ countries we cover. The reader does not have to be an expert in every country's company-law regime to read a report on a counterparty in it.

Search for a company by name and country, or browse company information by country.

Common questions about company information

Is company information confidential?

Most fundamental company information is not confidential: directors, registered office, status, share capital and major filings are publicly disclosed in almost every jurisdiction as a condition of incorporation. Some categories (UBO data in some EU member states; private-company financials in the US; commercial contracts and customer lists everywhere) are not public. The answer depends on which piece of information and which country.

Is company information free?

Some countries publish it free (the UK is the leading example), some charge per extract (much of continental Europe), and some publish little publicly at all. A consolidated international report aggregates information across these regimes and translates and structures it, which is the cost most professional users are paying for.

Can a company control what information about it is public?

Within limits, yes: companies control voluntary disclosure (marketing, websites, press, opt-in to credit registers) and have some scope to choose which filing format they use (a small company in the UK may file abridged accounts, for instance). They generally cannot suppress required statutory filings, court judgements, sanctions matches, or other adverse records validly placed on public record. Editing or correcting registry data has to be done through the registry itself; data providers like us do not control source records.

Is company information the same as a company credit report?

A company credit report is a particular use of company information, focused on whether and to what extent the company can be safely extended commercial credit. It draws on the same underlying sources but emphasises financial position, payment history, credit standing and risk indicators. Company information in the broader sense includes everything else as well: ownership, structure, activity, regulatory standing, history.

How current is company information?

Registry data is as current as the company's most recent filing, which may be the same day or several months ago, depending on jurisdiction and filing cycle. Investigated reports are dated to the day they are produced, and explicitly note when underlying public-record data was last updated.