The largest open database of companies in the world
Yesterday we had a minor celebration in the OpenCorporates office. For days the data team have had one eye on our company counter, as it approached the 180 million mark, with frequent updates across the office and on our messaging systems reporting the latest query output from ElasticSearch, and at 15:49 BST yesterday we hit … Continue reading One hundred and eighty (million)! Another milestone
What is your role at OpenCorporates? I run the data team at OpenCorporates and so I am responsible for all of our data. This encompasses the sourcing of information from local registries, ensuring we understand the data and any quality issues, and transforming it to our standardised datasets which are used by our public benefit … Continue reading Meet Rebecca Lee, Chief Data Officer
Earlier this year, we reported on OpenCorporates' legal battle against the Quebec company register in the Montreal Superior Court – 2 years earlier we had applied to the court to rule that the register was wrong in its assertion that Act Respecting the Legal Publicity of Enterprises (ALPE) meant that we weren't allowed to hold … Continue reading OpenCorporates wins Quebec court battle
Do you have a journalist or investigator mindset? Do you have a spare 5 to 6 weeks to work with us either full or part time? If so, we would love to hear from you! We are looking for individuals to help us complete manual research on corporate networks. This is an exciting opportunity for … Continue reading Urgent – Researchers wanted!
What is your role at OpenCorporates? I joined OpenCorporates in April as Chief Technology Officer. What drew you to work for OpenCorporates? When I looked at the company, three things in particular interested me. Firstly, it’s a real revenue-generating business, not one of these venture capital-backed companies that are trying to make a unicorn. Secondly, … Continue reading Meet Alan Buxton, Chief Technology Officer
Here at OpenCorporates, we really care about official company data – and getting this data right means we need to know a lot about the nature of legal entities, what a company is, and what its legal personality actually means, particularly in a world where companies are ever increasing in number, speed and complexity. Every … Continue reading A brief history of shell companies: must read for company data wonks
We're proud to announce that we have now released the first public release of OpenCorporates’ new corporate events system. This has been a really substantial project that's been more complex and more difficult than we expected, and threw up many issues and questions along the way. And there's still much more work to be done … Continue reading At last: corporate events for everyone
Great news: last week, the Council of Europe approved the "Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information" (press release). This was the last opportunity for the directive to be rejected or changed, and it will go into force 20 days after the directive is published in the EU Official Journal (probably … Continue reading It’s official: EU Company Registers to go open data (subject to…)
Earlier this week, the UK Parliament's Joint Committee on the Draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill published its recommendations on the bill, and we're pleased to say they've explicitly accepted a lot of our recommendations (as well as ones we made in common with anti-corruption NGOs such as Global Witness).
As global corporate organisations grow ever more complex and automation increasingly influences how business relationships evolve, the need for universally accessible non-proprietary data on corporate legal entities becomes more acute.
