Beneficial Owner Lookup shows who really owns or controls a company: the people and parent companies with significant control over a UK company, the share and voting bands they hold, and when their control started or ended.
Ownership often hides behind holding companies and nominee directors. This lookup reads the official register of people with significant control, the record every UK company must keep of anyone holding more than 25% of shares or votes or the right to appoint the board. For a US public company it returns the insider and large-holder ownership filings instead.
What you can do
- beneficial_owners — current and former controllers of a company, with the nature of their control
Who it's for
Compliance and KYC teams, banks and lenders, procurement teams checking suppliers, and investigative journalists tracing who sits behind a business.
How to use it
- Get the company number (UK, eight characters) from an invoice, letterhead or contract
- Call beneficial_owners with it as company_id
- Read the active list for current controllers; where a controller is itself a company, look up that company's owners in turn
Getting started
Pass a UK company number such as "08804411".
