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European countries begin taking down public company registers after ruling

182 points by ilamont 4y ago

LatteLazy 4y ago
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"...
- nebolo 4y ago
  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.
- sva_ 4y ago
  https://e-justice.europa.eu/38590/EN/beneficial_ownership_registers_interconnection_system_boris?EUROPEAN_UNION&action=maximize&idSubpage=1&member=1 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-business-register/kvk-ubo-register-extract/ 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).
- rudasn 4y ago
  You can check opencorporate for that info.
- sph 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean: All directors, shareholders and accounts are publicly available on the Companies House website.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    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...
  - yardstick 4y ago
    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.
    - sph 4y ago
      Yeah you might be right, only bigger shareholders are listed.
    - theonlybutlet 4y ago
      That's accounting speak for true ownership. But they do get around this listing some legal entity in a tax haven.
    - petercooper 4y ago
      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.. ;-)
      - blibble 4y ago
        annual returns were dropped several years ago a new company won't have one at all
        petercooper 4y ago
- potamic 4y ago
  Interesting. It's public information in India which I thought would have inherited from the UK.
  - bennysonething 4y ago
    I think the parent post is wrong.
  - tailspin2019 4y ago
    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.
    - fakedang 4y ago
      Is the UK bound by the CJEU anymore?
      - johneth 4y ago
        Not since Brexit.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  Have you tried searching Companies House for the Ltd? https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/ https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    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...
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      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.
- Daniel_sk 4y ago
  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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hnbad 4y ago
  The directive in question is this one from 2018: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32018L0843 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%3A32015L0849 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
- r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
  You have to click on people > persons with significant control tab.Those are the owners.
mikeyouse 4y ago
Beneficial Ownership Registries are one of the most effective tools at identifying public corruption. It's crazy that anyone is going away from them rather than toward them.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Propably one of those blown out of proportion things. The public register in Germany is up and running just fine. Including balance sheets from two years ago in case of a GmbH. Highly complex holding set ups are harder to identify actual people behind, but not impossible. 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.
nickpinkston 4y ago
This thread focuses on Russian oligarchs hiding money, but doesn't mention what I think is likely a bigger long term issue here, ie Chinese private equity IP raids. 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-get-tech-savvy-gobbling-up-germanys-factories https://www.npr.org/2018/10/03/639636532/chinese-companies-g... [2] http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/08/07/digestion-and-re-innovation-a-lesson-learned-from-china%C2%B4s-high-speed-rail-technology-transfer-agreements/ http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/08/07/digestion-and-re-innovatio...
- javajosh 4y ago
  I think it's cool to be so rich and big and powerful you can let this sort of thing happen and not even worry about it. Didn't even make the news (first I'm hearing of it). 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?
  - nickpinkston 4y ago
    Yea, I think it's less helpful to criticize the individuals involved, and more that they shouldn't be the ones making the decision. It should be blocked by regulators. 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.
legitster 4y ago
Something similar happened when the "right to be forgotten" laws passed. Under the guise of privacy, the law was largely petitioned by and for bad actors.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  "Under the guise of privacy?" Weird framing. These bad actors demanded privacy for themselves, they did not demand something else (what?) under the guise of privacy.
- seydor 4y ago
  A lot of people called doom when GDPR forced WHOIS to remove DNS domain owner names. But the sky hasn't fallen yet.
someweirdperson 4y ago
Publishing who owns X is the same as publishing everything a person owns. Viewed from one side there is convincing reasons for the public to know, viewed from the other side it is a matter of privacy. Do I want to know? Do I want others to know about myself?
- cheriot 4y ago
  Treating large companies differently than private citizens seems pretty reasonable to me. At some point, money is no longer about consumption, it's a form of power. We should be able to identify those with power.
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    It is also only true of corporations. Nobody has to start a corporation in order to run a business. You can be a sole trader and keep everything to yourself. If you want the protection of a corporation you have to pay for it with a level of transparency. Seems fair to me
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > who owns X is the same as publishing everything a person owns No, one is an asset the other a liability. Most peoples’ liabilities are recorded on a credit report.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Why on earth would the 99.9% stop for even the space of breath to consider the privacy of the 0.1% of the planet who owns and is largely ruining everything probably for centuries to come. Civilized life is no less adversarial than the savanna except nobody expects the wildebeest to pause a moment to consider the needs of the lions trying to eat her baby. Why should she? Why should we? 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.
fakedang 4y ago
It's funny how even tax havens report on Beneficial Owners, while the EU wants to go back to the dark ages.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > funny how even tax havens report on Beneficial Owners How can I find the beneficial owners of a Cayman, BVI, Jersey or Mauritius entity?
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    You have to physically go there, fill a module and pay a fee.
- from 4y ago
  The dark ages of... 2017! Are we any safer now then we were then?
mensetmanusman 4y ago
A travesty. Kleptocracy is poison. The US and the EU have to be vigilant in fighting it.
- from 4y ago
  "Kleptocracy" results in net wealth transfer from corrupt African and former Soviet countries to Europe and America. Why should I be mad about that?
  - prvit 4y ago
    Because the Guardian says so.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Because you don't just get the wealth, you also get the owner-kleptocrats along with it.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
I guess we'd better hope future take overs are as public as musk and twitter.
dang 4y ago
We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058 https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058, which points to this (or rather doesn't point to it, but is a commentary on it). Readers might want to read both.
- ilyt 4y ago
  ...changed to URL behind paywall ? Why ?
  - dang 4y ago
    HN's rule of thumb is: if there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. It won't be long before someone does here. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=paywalls%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- pottertheotter 4y ago
  Seems like the original link is a better source. People can still click on the ft link in the tweet, but it’s the tweet thread that I found best (especially since I can’t even read ft).
  - creaturemachine 4y ago
    High time we wean ourselves off twitter anyway.
- throwawaynov22 4y ago
  Hey Dang, about 2 weeks ago I mailed hn@ycombinator.com and requested a removal of 2 comments I made years ago. The same day, someone replied, removed the username from the comments and asked me if I'm ok with that. I made the argument that the comments uniquely identify me and I would feel better if at least one of them was removed. The comments did not get any meaningful replies, no thread developed, there is nothing interesting to the community about them. 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?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/rp6U2 https://archive.ph/rp6U2
bbanyc 4y ago
This has never been public record in the US, part of how America’s lax reporting requirements for private companies have traditionally made it more “business friendly” than Europe. 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.
- from 4y ago
  Banks were already collecting beneficial ownership information due to the CDD rule from FINCEN in 2018. Many banks especially those that had past problems with FINCEN/FDIC AML inspectors were doing it long before that. America is hardly a lax jurisdiction, people conflate registering a company with actually being able to do anything with it. Not to mention if the company is paying someone the IRS will know about that, they'll also have the EIN application, etc. Europe has all the supposedly state of the art AML rules but at the end of the day stuff like sanctions violations, money laundering, etc that gets you 7 years in prison in America gets you a suspended sentence and a €100,000 fine in the Netherlands.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I think that is not a bad thing in general despite specific framing intended to play on anti-Russia sentiment. I would personally argue that too much information about us as individuals ( what we do, own and write ) is in some database accessible to the highest bidder of unknown intentions. It may be high time to push back on that ( and I did wonder when someone with actual power to make it happen will, because obviously it did not happen without input from various interest groups ). 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" ).
- hnbad 4y ago
  As a business owner in the EU I disagree. 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%3A32018L0843 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I think I would agree if it was truly open and accessible to the public ( say published on government website somewhere ) and not hidden behind data brokers' paywalls with the understanding that everyone is included ( and I do mean everyone ). 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.
theCrowing 4y ago
Almost every country in the EU has a public register themselves. It will be harder without the EU system but it won't be impossible.
- seydor 4y ago
  There was no EU system
  - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
    Each EU country implements its own.
dang 4y ago
See also https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058 https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058
r12343a_19 4y ago
Well, the immediate associates is generally public info. It's the "final human owner" that gets blurry if you have a chain of companies. 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.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  why would it get blurry, if the owner of a company is available then it would be available all the way up the tree of ownership
  - r12343a_19 4y ago
    It's blurry because it crosses state boundaries into random countries which don't make this available.
- sfe22 4y ago
  Was was democracy a thing in the past?
lost_tourist 4y ago
This should be illegal everywhere. If you want to benefit from living in a society you should own what you own.
prvit 4y ago
I’ll offer a different take here. 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.
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  I'm 100% with you here. 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.
  - from 4y ago
    Very little verification of UBO registers ever actually occurs. Which is why "oligarchs" have nominees and having to lie on another government form doesn't make a difference.
- ghusto 4y ago
  I'll go further and say they do bugger all to stop corruption. The rich will continue to find their loopholes and dodgy accountants. I know because I've worked for them. Pass all the laws you want, it's not going to effect them. What they _do_ achieve however is getting your name irreversibly splattered around just for helping a charity as a "board member".
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  Why should business owners be anonymous? Honest or not is irrelevant, the public should be able to find out who owns those companies, be it a local restaurant or a giant multinational corporation that owns stores and property through 18 different holding companies.
  - prvit 4y ago
seydor 4y ago
At this point those companies have moved to Dubai so not that useful anyway
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > At this point those companies have moved to Dubai so not that useful anyway 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.
  - prvit 4y ago
    People do not start companies in Dubai instead of the EU because of paperwork, Dubai is particularly paperwork heavy (especially if you need a local bank account).
  - seydor 4y ago
    They are not bound to exchange information according to FATCA/CRS about owners for companies registered in the Free zone.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    There are plenty of countries in the EU where corporate tax rate is 10-20% which is very reasonable (e.g. California is 28%). Of course you can't really compete with 0%.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ghusto 4y ago
> “Access to beneficial ownership data is vital to identifying — and stopping — corruption and dirty money" 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.
- abduhl 4y ago
  I don’t understand your post. Is the UK bound up in this somehow post Brexit? 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?
  - ghusto 4y ago
    I could be wrong, but I believe this is the same thing? https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house 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.
    - wbl 4y ago
      So that everyone can assess the character of the people running the charity.
      - prvit 4y ago
        This is a solved problem, you can simply refuse to work with charities that don’t share such information.
    - 4y ago
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
It's a shame that the story went viral only after a Navalny team chief investigator tweeted about it. Where are European reporters?
- from 4y ago
  > It's a shame that the story went viral only after a Navalny team chief investigator tweeted about it. 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-provision-whereby-the-information-on-the-beneficial-ownership-of-companies-incorporated-within-the-territory-of-the-member-states-is-accessible-in-all-cases-to-any-member-of-the/ https://raytodd.blog/2022/11/22/eu-aml-directive-the-provisi...
  - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
    You can't imagine how many business processes will have to change and how many business opportunities will void if company ownership information suddenly becomes private.
    - from 4y ago
      So people who scrape public records for a living will be out of work? Or will the journalists at the OCCRP ICIJ et al who make their living harassing businesspeople from "undesirable" countries have to work a little harder when writing their stories? Not sure how to assess how much of a loss to society this will be.
      - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
        Whois database switched from a public record database where individual registrant names and addresses are published into an opaque and largely useless thing where personal information is hidden either by registrars or worse by the likes of MarkMonitor. The same avaits UBO registers and public company databases if we do not oppose this.
seydor 4y ago
The UBO registers will still exist and be accessible to interested parties such as journalists. It's the public aspect of it that is going away.
eurasiantiger 4y ago
The narco-state is coming to Europe.
Aerroon 4y ago
Hopefully this lowers the amount of spam too. 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).
hnarn 4y ago
I can see both sides of the argument, if you want to protect personal data then that arguably must also include the personal data of the owner of a company. 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.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Owning a company is not a right but a privilege and as such individual rights like privacy don't apply. Much like how driving a car is not a right, you can't say you will do a 90% tint on your window for the sake of privacy or hide your license plate so you won't be tracked.
leobg 4y ago
For Germany, making the registers private will change little with regards to spam. Because EU and German law still requires that every website, every email and every job posting for any commercial enterprise contains an imprint (including the name of the person responsible and an email address).
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  Unfortunately, due to the ways the laws are worded, even a lot of seemingly private pages fall under the imprint requirements, or at least inside of a big legal grey area. 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.
  - leobg 4y ago
    Yup. It’s a joke. Also: How does anyone ever sue you if you don’t have one? After all, they don’t know who to sue then. :-)
- nicbou 4y ago
  Yes but you have to scrape lots of websites instead of a single one. You can also control which information you list, so long as it allows customers to reach you quickly. As a consumer, I really appreciate the imprint law. I don't do business with websites that omit it.

182 points by ilamont 4y ago

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"...

nebolo 4y ago
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.
sva_ 4y ago
https://e-justice.europa.eu/38590/EN/beneficial_ownership_registers_interconnection_system_boris?EUROPEAN_UNION&action=maximize&idSubpage=1&member=1 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-business-register/kvk-ubo-register-extract/ 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).
rudasn 4y ago
You can check opencorporate for that info.
sph 4y ago
I'm not sure what you mean: All directors, shareholders and accounts are publicly available on the Companies House website.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  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...
- yardstick 4y ago
  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.
  - sph 4y ago
    Yeah you might be right, only bigger shareholders are listed.
  - theonlybutlet 4y ago
    That's accounting speak for true ownership. But they do get around this listing some legal entity in a tax haven.
  - petercooper 4y ago
    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.. ;-)
    - blibble 4y ago
      annual returns were dropped several years ago a new company won't have one at all
      - petercooper 4y ago
potamic 4y ago
Interesting. It's public information in India which I thought would have inherited from the UK.
- bennysonething 4y ago
  I think the parent post is wrong.
- tailspin2019 4y ago
  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.
  - fakedang 4y ago
    Is the UK bound by the CJEU anymore?
    - johneth 4y ago
      Not since Brexit.
cassianoleal 4y ago
Have you tried searching Companies House for the Ltd? https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/ https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  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...
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    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.
Daniel_sk 4y ago
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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hnbad 4y ago
The directive in question is this one from 2018: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32018L0843 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%3A32015L0849 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
You have to click on people > persons with significant control tab.Those are the owners.

mikeyouse 4y ago

Beneficial Ownership Registries are one of the most effective tools at identifying public corruption. It's crazy that anyone is going away from them rather than toward them.

hef19898 4y ago
Propably one of those blown out of proportion things. The public register in Germany is up and running just fine. Including balance sheets from two years ago in case of a GmbH. Highly complex holding set ups are harder to identify actual people behind, but not impossible. 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.

nickpinkston 4y ago

This thread focuses on Russian oligarchs hiding money, but doesn't mention what I think is likely a bigger long term issue here, ie Chinese private equity IP raids. 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-get-tech-savvy-gobbling-up-germanys-factories https://www.npr.org/2018/10/03/639636532/chinese-companies-g... [2] http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/08/07/digestion-and-re-innovation-a-lesson-learned-from-china%C2%B4s-high-speed-rail-technology-transfer-agreements/ http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/08/07/digestion-and-re-innovatio...

javajosh 4y ago
I think it's cool to be so rich and big and powerful you can let this sort of thing happen and not even worry about it. Didn't even make the news (first I'm hearing of it). 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?
- nickpinkston 4y ago
  Yea, I think it's less helpful to criticize the individuals involved, and more that they shouldn't be the ones making the decision. It should be blocked by regulators. 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.

legitster 4y ago

Something similar happened when the "right to be forgotten" laws passed. Under the guise of privacy, the law was largely petitioned by and for bad actors.

amadeuspagel 4y ago
"Under the guise of privacy?" Weird framing. These bad actors demanded privacy for themselves, they did not demand something else (what?) under the guise of privacy.
seydor 4y ago
A lot of people called doom when GDPR forced WHOIS to remove DNS domain owner names. But the sky hasn't fallen yet.

someweirdperson 4y ago

Publishing who owns X is the same as publishing everything a person owns. Viewed from one side there is convincing reasons for the public to know, viewed from the other side it is a matter of privacy. Do I want to know? Do I want others to know about myself?

cheriot 4y ago
Treating large companies differently than private citizens seems pretty reasonable to me. At some point, money is no longer about consumption, it's a form of power. We should be able to identify those with power.
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  It is also only true of corporations. Nobody has to start a corporation in order to run a business. You can be a sole trader and keep everything to yourself. If you want the protection of a corporation you have to pay for it with a level of transparency. Seems fair to me
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> who owns X is the same as publishing everything a person owns No, one is an asset the other a liability. Most peoples’ liabilities are recorded on a credit report.
michaelmrose 4y ago
Why on earth would the 99.9% stop for even the space of breath to consider the privacy of the 0.1% of the planet who owns and is largely ruining everything probably for centuries to come. Civilized life is no less adversarial than the savanna except nobody expects the wildebeest to pause a moment to consider the needs of the lions trying to eat her baby. Why should she? Why should we? 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.

fakedang 4y ago

It's funny how even tax havens report on Beneficial Owners, while the EU wants to go back to the dark ages.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> funny how even tax havens report on Beneficial Owners How can I find the beneficial owners of a Cayman, BVI, Jersey or Mauritius entity?
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  You have to physically go there, fill a module and pay a fee.
from 4y ago
The dark ages of... 2017! Are we any safer now then we were then?

mensetmanusman 4y ago

A travesty. Kleptocracy is poison. The US and the EU have to be vigilant in fighting it.

from 4y ago
"Kleptocracy" results in net wealth transfer from corrupt African and former Soviet countries to Europe and America. Why should I be mad about that?
- prvit 4y ago
  Because the Guardian says so.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Because you don't just get the wealth, you also get the owner-kleptocrats along with it.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

I guess we'd better hope future take overs are as public as musk and twitter.

dang 4y ago

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058 https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058, which points to this (or rather doesn't point to it, but is a commentary on it). Readers might want to read both.

ilyt 4y ago
...changed to URL behind paywall ? Why ?
- dang 4y ago
  HN's rule of thumb is: if there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. It won't be long before someone does here. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=paywalls%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
pottertheotter 4y ago
Seems like the original link is a better source. People can still click on the ft link in the tweet, but it’s the tweet thread that I found best (especially since I can’t even read ft).
- creaturemachine 4y ago
  High time we wean ourselves off twitter anyway.
throwawaynov22 4y ago
Hey Dang, about 2 weeks ago I mailed hn@ycombinator.com and requested a removal of 2 comments I made years ago. The same day, someone replied, removed the username from the comments and asked me if I'm ok with that. I made the argument that the comments uniquely identify me and I would feel better if at least one of them was removed. The comments did not get any meaningful replies, no thread developed, there is nothing interesting to the community about them. 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?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/rp6U2 https://archive.ph/rp6U2

bbanyc 4y ago

This has never been public record in the US, part of how America’s lax reporting requirements for private companies have traditionally made it more “business friendly” than Europe. 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.

from 4y ago
Banks were already collecting beneficial ownership information due to the CDD rule from FINCEN in 2018. Many banks especially those that had past problems with FINCEN/FDIC AML inspectors were doing it long before that. America is hardly a lax jurisdiction, people conflate registering a company with actually being able to do anything with it. Not to mention if the company is paying someone the IRS will know about that, they'll also have the EIN application, etc. Europe has all the supposedly state of the art AML rules but at the end of the day stuff like sanctions violations, money laundering, etc that gets you 7 years in prison in America gets you a suspended sentence and a €100,000 fine in the Netherlands.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

I think that is not a bad thing in general despite specific framing intended to play on anti-Russia sentiment. I would personally argue that too much information about us as individuals ( what we do, own and write ) is in some database accessible to the highest bidder of unknown intentions. It may be high time to push back on that ( and I did wonder when someone with actual power to make it happen will, because obviously it did not happen without input from various interest groups ). 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" ).

hnbad 4y ago
As a business owner in the EU I disagree. 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%3A32018L0843 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I think I would agree if it was truly open and accessible to the public ( say published on government website somewhere ) and not hidden behind data brokers' paywalls with the understanding that everyone is included ( and I do mean everyone ). 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.

theCrowing 4y ago

Almost every country in the EU has a public register themselves. It will be harder without the EU system but it won't be impossible.

seydor 4y ago
There was no EU system
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  Each EU country implements its own.

dang 4y ago

See also https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058 https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588206874157058

r12343a_19 4y ago

Well, the immediate associates is generally public info. It's the "final human owner" that gets blurry if you have a chain of companies. 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.

lost_tourist 4y ago
why would it get blurry, if the owner of a company is available then it would be available all the way up the tree of ownership
- r12343a_19 4y ago
  It's blurry because it crosses state boundaries into random countries which don't make this available.
sfe22 4y ago
Was was democracy a thing in the past?

lost_tourist 4y ago

This should be illegal everywhere. If you want to benefit from living in a society you should own what you own.

prvit 4y ago

I’ll offer a different take here. 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.

TacticalCoder 4y ago
I'm 100% with you here. 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.
- from 4y ago
  Very little verification of UBO registers ever actually occurs. Which is why "oligarchs" have nominees and having to lie on another government form doesn't make a difference.
ghusto 4y ago
I'll go further and say they do bugger all to stop corruption. The rich will continue to find their loopholes and dodgy accountants. I know because I've worked for them. Pass all the laws you want, it's not going to effect them. What they _do_ achieve however is getting your name irreversibly splattered around just for helping a charity as a "board member".
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
Why should business owners be anonymous? Honest or not is irrelevant, the public should be able to find out who owns those companies, be it a local restaurant or a giant multinational corporation that owns stores and property through 18 different holding companies.
- prvit 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

At this point those companies have moved to Dubai so not that useful anyway

TacticalCoder 4y ago
> At this point those companies have moved to Dubai so not that useful anyway 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.
- prvit 4y ago
  People do not start companies in Dubai instead of the EU because of paperwork, Dubai is particularly paperwork heavy (especially if you need a local bank account).
- seydor 4y ago
  They are not bound to exchange information according to FATCA/CRS about owners for companies registered in the Free zone.
- qwytw 4y ago
  There are plenty of countries in the EU where corporate tax rate is 10-20% which is very reasonable (e.g. California is 28%). Of course you can't really compete with 0%.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ghusto 4y ago

> “Access to beneficial ownership data is vital to identifying — and stopping — corruption and dirty money" 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.

abduhl 4y ago
I don’t understand your post. Is the UK bound up in this somehow post Brexit? 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?
- ghusto 4y ago
  I could be wrong, but I believe this is the same thing? https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house 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.
  - wbl 4y ago
    So that everyone can assess the character of the people running the charity.
    - prvit 4y ago
      This is a solved problem, you can simply refuse to work with charities that don’t share such information.
  - 4y ago

sam_lowry_ 4y ago

It's a shame that the story went viral only after a Navalny team chief investigator tweeted about it. Where are European reporters?

from 4y ago
> It's a shame that the story went viral only after a Navalny team chief investigator tweeted about it. 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-provision-whereby-the-information-on-the-beneficial-ownership-of-companies-incorporated-within-the-territory-of-the-member-states-is-accessible-in-all-cases-to-any-member-of-the/ https://raytodd.blog/2022/11/22/eu-aml-directive-the-provisi...
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  You can't imagine how many business processes will have to change and how many business opportunities will void if company ownership information suddenly becomes private.
  - from 4y ago
    So people who scrape public records for a living will be out of work? Or will the journalists at the OCCRP ICIJ et al who make their living harassing businesspeople from "undesirable" countries have to work a little harder when writing their stories? Not sure how to assess how much of a loss to society this will be.
    - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
      Whois database switched from a public record database where individual registrant names and addresses are published into an opaque and largely useless thing where personal information is hidden either by registrars or worse by the likes of MarkMonitor. The same avaits UBO registers and public company databases if we do not oppose this.

seydor 4y ago

The UBO registers will still exist and be accessible to interested parties such as journalists. It's the public aspect of it that is going away.

eurasiantiger 4y ago

The narco-state is coming to Europe.

Aerroon 4y ago

Hopefully this lowers the amount of spam too. 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).

hnarn 4y ago

I can see both sides of the argument, if you want to protect personal data then that arguably must also include the personal data of the owner of a company. 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.

_8j50 4y ago
Owning a company is not a right but a privilege and as such individual rights like privacy don't apply. Much like how driving a car is not a right, you can't say you will do a 90% tint on your window for the sake of privacy or hide your license plate so you won't be tracked.

leobg 4y ago

For Germany, making the registers private will change little with regards to spam. Because EU and German law still requires that every website, every email and every job posting for any commercial enterprise contains an imprint (including the name of the person responsible and an email address).

iggldiggl 4y ago
Unfortunately, due to the ways the laws are worded, even a lot of seemingly private pages fall under the imprint requirements, or at least inside of a big legal grey area. 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.
- leobg 4y ago
  Yup. It’s a joke. Also: How does anyone ever sue you if you don’t have one? After all, they don’t know who to sue then. :-)
nicbou 4y ago
Yes but you have to scrape lots of websites instead of a single one. You can also control which information you list, so long as it allows customers to reach you quickly. As a consumer, I really appreciate the imprint law. I don't do business with websites that omit it.