Tag Archives: company registers

Information on companies in Israel

All companies in Israel must register with The Registrar of Companies at the Ministry of Justice (http://www.justice.gov.il/MOJEng/) and the tax authorities. The register can be searched at http://havarot.justice.gov.il/ using part or all of a company name in English or Hebrew, or by entering the company number.

Israel - Register of Companies

The search interface and the results are in Hebrew but if you are using Google Chrome the built-in translator does a reasonable job of translating the text into English.

Israel Company Register search  translated

Free information on a company includes type of company, address, legal status and purpose of the company.

Israel Company Register free information

Additional information such as details of directors, total authorized capital, division of share capital, shareholders, charges and liabilities is priced. It is at this point that the Google translation starts to fail, so if you need more than just confirmation that the company exists it is best to use a commercial service that can run your search and translate the documents. One such company is IsraelBizReg (http://www.israelbizreg.com/).

IsraelBizReg is a division of KYC Israel, an Israeli due diligence firm. They offer English translated company reports in three formats: basic, detailed, and a full company file. You can search the database free of charge to see if your company is in the register. If you cannot find it IsraelBizReg will perform a company search free of charge. The basic report costs $50, detailed is $100 and the full company file is $150.

IsraelBizReg

Another company that provides similar services is UK based 7Side (http://www.7side.co.uk/). Like IsraelBizReg it is pay as you go and they offer a translation service.

7Side International Data and Documents
7Side International Data and Documents

A summary of what is available and the costs involved for International Registry Documents and Reports all available in 1 hour is at http://www.7side.co.uk/moreinfo/International_Registry_and_Documents_Service.pdf.

The price list for English translated International company overviews is at http://www.7side.co.uk/moreinfo/marksales/7Side_ICO_Reports.pdf.

Official companies register for the Ukraine

The Ukrainian official companies register can be found at http://irc.gov.ua/ua/Poshuk-v-YeDR.html. The interface and information is in Ukrainian only but Google’s translation option does a good enough job to help you through the site. If you use Google Chrome as your browser you can enable its automatic translation prompt by going to Options, Under the Bonnet, and ticking the Translate box. Many thanks to Ladymyr Bondar for alerting me to the site.

Ukraine official companies register

Company registers: Slovenia and Croatia

I have added two more company registers – Slovenia and Croatia – to my Official Company Registers page at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm.

Slovenia

AJPES – Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Public Legal Records and Related Services (http://www.ajpes.si/)
AJPES provides access to the Slovenian Business Register online (ePRS), and Annual Reports of companies, cooperatives and sole proprietors (JOLP) free of charge. ePRS currently has around 211,000 entries and includes companies (partnerships and corporations), sole proprietors, legal entities governed by private law, societies, natural persons performing registered or regulated activities, subsidiaries and other divisions of business entities and main offices of foreign business entities.

You can search on a range of criteria: name, identification number, tax number, address, activity, sector and legal form. The amount of information available on each business entity varies depending on its legal form but typically includes identification number, company name, tax number, details of representatives and founders, etc. Credit rating reports (eS.BON) are also available for a fee. The interface to the site is available in English, Slovene, German and Italian. The information is available in English and Slovene. Free registration is required to view the free documents.

Croatia

Biznet (http://www.biznet.hr/) is maintained by the Croatian Chamber of Commerce and provides information and statistics on the Croatian economy, and access to the Register of Business Entities. The Biznet home page is in Croation and the link to the Register is under Registar poslovnih subjekata. You can view data for a single company or a selected set of companies grouped according to certain criteria for example industry, company size. Available information includes identification number, short and long name, county, municipality, address, phone, fax, E-mail, company size, main activity, legal form, number of employees, membership of professional associations. The Register is available in both Croatian and English and is free of charge.

Many thanks to Tomaz Lajovic for the information on both services.

Although much of the data on both sites is available in English some of the detailed reports and guides are in the local languages. Google’s Chrome automatically offers to translate texts and the Google toolbar for both Internet Explorer and Firefox has a translate option. If you are not allowed to install the toolbar then you can copy and paste the text or the URL of the page you wish to translate into Google’s translation tools at http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools. The quality of Google’s translations has improved significantly but you should still treat the results with caution. If the information is mission critical then find someone who is fluent in the language concerned to double check Google’s effort.

Malta Registry of Companies

The Malta Financial Services Authority Registry of Companies (http://rocsupport.mfsa.com.mt/pages/Default.aspx) has been added to my Official Company Registers page at  http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm. The registry provides free basic company details including registered address and company ID/number. You can browse the companies alphabetically or search by name or company ID/number. There is also a list of companies that have registered over the last 15 days.

Updates to Company Registers page

For those of you who need to track down official company information, the following updates have been made to the RBA Official Company Registers page at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm :

Austria

Updated link: please use http://dataweb.telekom.at and click on Firmenbuch ‘Details’.

Thanks to Herbert Tischler, Telekom Austria TA AG for the correction.

Bulgaria

Update: an electronic version of the register is available at http://www.brra.bg/, but only in Bulgarian at present.

Thanks to Orlin Nedkov for the update.

Isle of Man

The Isle of Man Companies Registry has changed its web address to http://www.gov.im/ded/companies/companiesregistry.xml

Thanks to Mark Collister from City Trust for the alert.

Panama

Registro Público de Panamá http://www.registro-publico.gob.pa/
The Public Registry for incorporations of Companies and Foundations in Panama. There is a searchable online register but only in Spanish. Click on the white box “Consulta Registral”, which is towards the bottom of the page, and you will then be taken to the register which currently at https://www.registro-publico.gob.pa/scripts/nwwisapi.dll/conweb/prinpage
In Spanish only.

Thanks to Tord Coucheron of Hatfield Oak International for the information.

Cayman Islands company registry

The General Registry Cayman Islands (http://www.ciregistry.gov.ky/) enables you to order birth, marriage and death certificates and now has a company search option. To gain access to the company search you first have to register (free of charge).  To view records you have to set up an account and deposit US$ 73.18, which is the cost of two company records. You can revisit the results of a search, free of charge, up to 24 hours after performing the search. Results include Company name, File number, Formation date, Registration date, Entity type, Registered Office, Status & Status date.

Many thanks to Suzanne Bartlett for the information and feedback on the service.

GBRDirect – search the European Business Register

If you want to check the credentials of a company then the first port of call has to be the official company register of the country in which the company is based. Many of the registers are on the web and allow you to search and view some of the information free of charge.  (See my own list at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm. Also Company registration around the world and Worldwide registries). This approach does not always yield results and often proves to be more difficult than anticipated. It assumes that the company or organisation is required or has volunteered to register, which is not always the case. For example, in the UK, sole traders do not have to register and therefore will not be found at Companies House. Then there is the problem of navigating a company registry web site that may be in a language other than your own. Even if you manage to work your way through the navigation and search options you will usually find that the data is in the local language. And this all assumes that you know where the company is based; if you don’t you have to trawl through possible registries one by one.

There are many services that provide you with easy search options and access to translated official company information but these can be expensive, and there are occasions when you need to see the original registration documents and filings. One partial solution for Europe is the European Business Register (http://www.ebr.org/). This is a network of many of the European company registers offering a “one-stop-shop” for company information. Access to the register is via “partners” – you can identify the partner for your country at http://www.ebr.org/partners.htm. For the UK and Ireland the partner is the Global Business Register (http://www.globalbusinessregister.co.uk/) or GBRDirect.

Currently GBRDirect connects to the national corporate registries in:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,Ireland, Jersey, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Republic of Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

In order to use GBRDirect you first have to register and also “top-up” your account using a debit or credit card. All documents are priced and so is a successful search, which costs £1.50. You are not charged for a list of results but as soon as you click on an entry in the list your search is deemed to be successful and you are charged for it. Once on the ‘company’ screen, available documents and their prices are listed. 

GBR Direct Company Documents Screen

Prices vary depending on the type of document you wish to view and the country. A price list and the type of documents available for each country can be found at http://www.gbrdirect.co.uk/GBRDirect%20Pricelist.pdf

As well as a company search you can also carry out a search for company officials in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the UK.

On the plus side this service enables you to quickly search many of the European registers through a single interface. On the down side you still have to know the country in which the company is based and the documents will be in the local language. You may also end up paying for information that is available free of charge direct from the national registry and the European Business Register seems to go down with alarming regularity. About half of my searches failed because “The EBR Service is not available at the moment” and I am finding the down time increasingly frustrating. When it works GBRDirect is an excellent way of searching the EBR but you still need to know the location of the individual country registries in case the service is down and you need documents urgently.

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

The Texas Secretary of State is the official office for registering various business entities in Texas, but I have been told that it is not the best source for quick and free information.  The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts – Taxable Entity Search has basic business entity information including name, status, location, agent, file number, SOS (Secretary of State) registration date, and taxpayer ID.  You can search by file number, tax ID or entity name.