The largest open database of companies in the world
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.
To coincide with our launch of OpenCorporates' new White Paper, The White Box Revolution – on how Black Box Data is being replaced with transparent, well-defined data with open IDs – our co-founder and CEO, Chris Taggart, last week presented a keynote at Strata EU, Europe's largest big data conference. Entitled the Irresistible Rise of … Continue reading Strata keynote: The irresistible rise of White Box Data
For the past 50 years, companies, regulators, investigators and journalists have mostly used ‘Black Box’ data - data that is opaque, not well defined, uses proprietary identifiers, and has poor data quality feedback loops. But continued reliance on this data could put a firm out of business within five years, according to a new report by OpenCorporates.
In January, we blogged that we're now publishing an internal policy paper – How OpenCorporates Should Handle Company Number Problems – under a Creative Commons Licence. We’ve since identified a few new cases which should be covered by our policy, so we’ve published a new version of this paper...
This month marks three years since the launch of the Panama Papers – a groundbreaking collaboration between hundreds of media organisations coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. On a Sunday evening in early April in 2016, hundreds of media outlets began to publish stories revealing how complex offshore structures are used to hide money, … Continue reading 3 years after the Panama Papers, European Parliament votes to open up company data
