Tag: corporate transparency

Illinois commits to open up its company data: A win for corporate transparency

The latest win in the global push for transparent company data came last July, when the legislature of the US state of Illinois passed a bill which committed the Secretary of State to make data from their official company register freely and openly available. We at OpenCorporates welcome this important and critical step. After all, … Continue reading Illinois commits to open up its company data: A win for corporate transparency →

OpenCorporates Annual Report 2020

We’re proud to release the OpenCorporates Annual Report 2020.  The year 2020 will be remembered for decades to come, thanks to the pandemic, and the changes to the world it has brought about. As well as the tragic loss of life, the short-term consequences on people’s livelihoods, on their physical and mental health, and on … Continue reading OpenCorporates Annual Report 2020 →

Corporate transparency: technical solution & a matter of social justice | Reflections from FinCrime World Forum

Access to fit-for-purpose company data (that is machine readable, contains provenance etc) has fast become an essential ingredient in anti-financial crime efforts. Whether you’re an investigative journalist, a law enforcement agent or a RegTech product manager, everybody in the anti-financial crime community stands to benefit from open access to company data. In this context, Rebecca … Continue reading Corporate transparency: technical solution & a matter of social justice | Reflections from FinCrime World Forum →

A corporate structure for the public benefit and the long term

  TL;DR OpenCorporates has come a long way in the past 6 years, and is increasingly core infrastructure for the corporate world, not to mention an essential tool for journalists, investigators, NGOs and governments. It’s time to ensure that its corporate structure reflects and safeguards that position, ensuring it will always act in the public … Continue reading A corporate structure for the public benefit and the long term →

European Court confirms company data can’t be whitewashed

In a significant victory for transparency and common sense, today the European Court of Justice today ruled that personal data in company records was not subject to the so-called 'right to be forgotten', even for dissolved companies. This is a crucial judgement for corporate transparency, and for the fight against the use of companies for criminal purposes, … Continue reading European Court confirms company data can’t be whitewashed →

Introducing OpenCorporates Advanced Search – more powerful than ever before

We’re proud to announce that there is now a more powerful way to search for company data on OpenCorporates. With now over 87 million companies in OpenCorporates, there are frequently many similarly named companies, and it can be sometimes a challenge to find the correct one. Well, now we’ve taken a significant step in solving this … Continue reading Introducing OpenCorporates Advanced Search – more powerful than ever before →

OpenCorporates featured in The Economist

In case you missed the Economist article mentioning OpenCorporates doing the rounds online on Thursday, I wanted to share it with you here. The article is in the Corporate Transparency section and begs the question about where the limits of transparency should be. You can view the article here.   If you want to get involved in helping OpenCorporates with our mission to work … Continue reading OpenCorporates featured in The Economist →

Understanding corporate networks. Part 2: Control without voting

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 →

Access to EU company data is very poor, Neelie

Two months ago, OpenCorporates published our ground-breaking report on access to company data in Open Government Partnership countries. The results were not good, with an average score of just 21 out of 100. Following this, Neelie Kroes, the EU Vice-President in charge the Digital Agenda, including open data, tweeted about the report, noting that the 15 … Continue reading Access to EU company data is very poor, Neelie →