The #FlashHacks event in London on is going to be different than the other ones you’ve attended. We’ve noticed a lot of you are very interested in mapping corporate networks. However, because we usually have a coding strand and a data hunting strand, the corporate network mapping gets left behind. This time around, we’re going … Continue reading A new kind of #FlashHacks event: Mapping corporate networks
Beneficial Ownership is a terrible expression. Outside of the NGO and anti-money-laundering community, nobody knows what it means, or why it's important. In fact the UK now refers to this information as Persons of Significant Control, which is another bit of jargon, but does a slightly better job of explaining what we mean – which … Continue reading Announcing Who Controls It: a proof-of-concept beneficial ownership register
We're proud to announce that version 0.3 of the OpenCorporates API is now live, with many, many new features, improvements (and even a few bug fixes). Along the way, we've also given it a visual refresh: The major improvements are: Access to corporate networks – our open corporate network work is truly ground-breaking, and providing … Continue reading New API version released: corporate networks, accounts, and more
In parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, we explored the complex world of corporate control, and how it is described in various regulations. We found that a company may control other companies in many different ways, from majority and minority share holdings to contractual relationships. At OpenCorporates we believe corporate control data is the cornerstone of a … Continue reading Understanding corporate networks. Part 4: how we record the data
What is a subsidiary? What do we mean by control? In Part 2 of this series on understanding corporate networks, I explored these questions and how they are answered by regulatory regimes around the world. It's one thing to define "control" in the regulations and accounting standards; however, without disclosure, we can't begin to map corporate … Continue reading Understanding corporate networks. Part 3: where’s the data?
In Part 1 of this series, I examined how companies can be controlled using the voting rights attached to shares. For example, this corporate network graph of Pearson New Zealand Limited is underpinned by a series of several underlying statements, most of which are about shares. You'll see that in addition to shareholdings, we list another type of … Continue reading Understanding corporate networks. Part 2: Control without voting
What is a corporate network? Is it the same as a corporate hierarchy, company tree, or a conglomerate? What do we really mean when we talk about 'Barclays', 'IBM' or 'BP'? As we've explained previously, a modern corporation (even a small one) is actually a complex network of related legal entities connected together in a … Continue reading Understanding corporate networks. Part 1: Control via equity
As we've written about elsewhere, when people think of a company like Starbucks, they think of it as a single entity. Yet Starbucks is at least 30 legal entities in over 20 countries. It's this group of legal entities that we call a corporate network of control, or just corporate network for short. At OpenCorporates, we think mapping … Continue reading Help uncover corporate networks!
Here's our keynote presentation we gave a couple of days ago at this year's Open Knowledge Conference, in Geneva (CC-licensed, of course): The event was really excellent, and we met so many good people there (from the open data community, from NGOs, from companies, and from government) that's it's set the bar incredibly high for … Continue reading Open data: Not just good, but better too
We've often heard company hierarchies and networks referred to as the Holy Grail of business information. That's not just a recognition of the value and importance of this data. It's also that it's really difficult to find... and to collect, and to make usable too. What's more, where this does exist as a dataset it's … Continue reading Announcing open corporate network data: not just good, but better
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