Confidence in an uncertain market

What is the one word that best characterises the company data market?  Uncertainty.  Traditional company data providers are increasingly consolidating – with acquisitions, buyouts and IPOs happening frequently. We observed this trend back in 2017, and recent examples suggest it has only accelerated: Moody’s Corporation acquired credit data provider Cortera in February 2021 Dun & Bradstreet … Continue reading Confidence in an uncertain market

Financial crime investigator: OpenCorporates is the ‘starting point’ of any investigation

It’s well documented that legal entities are commonly abused to facilitate financial crime. As far back as 2006, the Financial Action Task Force stated that “Shell corporations and nominees are widely used mechanisms to launder the proceeds from crime, particularly bribery”. That’s why countless transnational investigations into financial crime have started or been enhanced by … Continue reading Financial crime investigator: OpenCorporates is the ‘starting point’ of any investigation

New jurisdiction: Ukraine (1,526,000 companies)

The addition of Ukraine to OpenCorporates marks a couple of minor milestones - it’s the 125th jurisdiction, and we’ve now passed 135 million companies too. The data for Ukraine comes from its company register, Uniform State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Associations (USR), published as open data in XML format by National … Continue reading New jurisdiction: Ukraine (1,526,000 companies)

Civil society sends open letter to Quebec govt. in support of OpenCorporates

Following on from the law suit, that OpenCorporates brought against the Quebec company register, transparency and civic tech organisations, as well as journalists from Quebec and beyond, have sent an open letter to Quebec government in support of OpenCorporates and open company data. The letter not just supports OpenCorporates in its legal action, but goes … Continue reading Civil society sends open letter to Quebec govt. in support of OpenCorporates

Going to IODC? Help us design the Global Beneficial Ownership Register

Grand corruption is a networked problem; to fight it we need a networked solution, and nowhere is this more true than who controls and benefits from companies. The Global Beneficial Ownership Register will tackle this, by collecting and linking together beneficial ownership datasets and self-disclosed corporate data. By doing this, it will enable investigators and … Continue reading Going to IODC? Help us design the Global Beneficial Ownership Register

New White Paper: How open company data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry

Today, we're pleased to release a white paper on how OpenCorporates data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry, in a ground-breaking report from Global Witness. This investigation is an important case study on how open company data and identifiers are critical tool to uncover corruption and the … Continue reading New White Paper: How open company data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry

Weekly StandUp #29: What Happened at OpenCorporates

This post is the part of a weekly blogpost series updating you on what’s going on at OpenCorporates this week. Want to help us get more data? Claim a mission! Data the OpenCorporates team is scraping… from the Data team Peter has been looking at importing data from Panama, Jersey and other company registers them while … Continue reading Weekly StandUp #29: What Happened at OpenCorporates