Who Owns a Company? How to Check a Director (2026)

Quick answer

To find who owns a company, start with the official register where it was formed: a US Secretary of State search shows the registered agent and often the officers or managers, Companies House in the UK lists directors and people with significant control for free, and EU national registers list directors, with beneficial owners available to people with a legitimate interest. Use SEC EDGAR for public companies, the GLEIF LEI register for group structures and OpenCorporates for cross-border searches, then check each director's other appointments and the disqualified directors register.

Key numbers

5,479,045companies on the UK register at 31 March 2026, with 815,277 incorporations in the yearCompanies House statistical release, 2025 to 2026
1,158director disqualifications in Great Britain in 2025/26, with an average ban of 8.1 yearsInsolvency Service enforcement outcomes 2025-26
14EU countries that run a legitimate-interest access regime for beneficial ownership data since the 2022 CJEU ruling ended public accessTransparency International, 2025
140+jurisdictions whose government registries feed OpenCorporates, so one search covers companies and officers in many countriesOpenCorporates

You've been given a company name. Maybe it's a supplier asking for a deposit, a landlord's "management company", a startup offering you a job, or a client who wants 60-day payment terms. The name tells you very little. What you want to know is who owns a company like this and who runs it: the real people, and what else they have run.

The answer lives in public registers, and how much they reveal depends on where the company is based. The UK register alone held 5,479,045 companies at 31 March 2026 (Companies House), every one with its directors named for free, while the owners of a Delaware LLC can be entirely private. This guide shows you how to get from a company name to the people behind it in the US, UK and EU, and how to read a director's track record once you have it.

How do I find out who owns a company?

You find out who owns a company by searching the official register where it was incorporated, then following three separate trails: the officers (the directors or managers who run it), the shareholders or members (who legally own it), and the beneficial owners (the people who ultimately control it, sometimes through other companies). Registers differ in which of these they publish.

Get the exact legal name and jurisdiction from an invoice, contract, website footer or email signature. "Northwind" the brand may be Northwind Trading LLC in Wyoming or Northwind Trading Ltd in London.
Search the official register: the state's Secretary of State (US), Companies House (UK) or the national register (EU).
List the people: directors, officers, managers, the registered agent, and any persons with significant control or beneficial owners shown.
Follow corporate owners upward. If the owner is another company, search that one. Use the LEI register for group structures.
Check each person's track record: other companies, how those ended, and any disqualification.
Confirm the people are real with a name search: a work history, a professional profile, news mentions.

How do I find the owner of a US company or LLC?

In the US, search the Secretary of State's business database in the state of formation. It will always show the registered agent and often the officers or managers, but it may not show the owners at all. There is no national company register and the rules differ state by state; NASS links to every state's search.

Delaware shows the entity name, file number, formation date and registered agent for free, and nothing about officers or members (Division of Corporations). That privacy is one reason so many companies are formed there.
Florida's Sunbiz lets you search by officer or registered agent name as well as by company name, address or document number (Florida Division of Corporations), and records typically show an LLC's managers.
Arizona lists LLC members or managers in its public records, and Nevada's annual list names them too, while Wyoming and New Mexico rarely publish owner names at all (Tailor Brands' state-by-state summary).

Two more things to know. First, the federal beneficial ownership database was never public, and as of 2026 US companies don't have to file into it at all: FinCEN's interim rule of March 2025 exempted domestic companies and US persons, and its final rule, effective 14 August 2026, confirmed that only foreign-formed companies registered to do business in the US must report (FinCEN). A state record proves a company exists, not who owns it. Second, for a public company the owners are in SEC EDGAR: the annual proxy statement lists directors, executives and large shareholders, and ownership Forms 3, 4 and 5 show what insiders hold. Full-text search covers more than 20 years of filings.

For a private LLC, the only reliable route to the owners is to ask: a legitimate counterparty will show you the operating agreement or a signed ownership statement. Many states also let you search UCC filings, which show which lenders have claims on the company's assets.

How do I check a company director at Companies House?

At Companies House you can search a director by name for free and open their officer page, which lists every current and resigned appointment, including dissolved companies. The register also shows each company's status, incorporation date, registered office, full filing history with document images, mortgage charges and insolvency information (GOV.UK).

Search the company, then open "People". You'll see current officers, resigned officers and the persons with significant control (PSCs).
Click each officer to see their other appointments. Note how many companies, in what trades, and how each one ended.
Read the PSC section. A PSC is anyone who holds more than 25% of the shares or voting rights, has the right to appoint or remove a majority of the board, or otherwise exercises significant influence or control, directly or through another company (GOV.UK PSC guidance). The register names each PSC and which of those conditions they meet. If the PSC is another company, search it too.
Check the filing history. Overdue accounts, a late confirmation statement or a Gazette notice for strike-off are warnings.
Search the register of disqualified company directors, which shows the person's name, why they were disqualified and when the ban began. In 2025/26 the Insolvency Service disqualified 1,158 directors in Great Britain for an average of 8.1 years, most often for abusing COVID-19 financial support schemes (Insolvency Service).

Since 18 November 2025, new directors and PSCs have had to verify their identity with Companies House under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, with existing directors phased in at their company's next confirmation statement (CMS). That makes it harder to run a company under an invented name. It doesn't tell you whether the business is sound.

A Search A-Z business search connects the register to the person. Enter the director's full name and country, choose "Business contact", and add the company name. The report says how sure we are it's the right person, then shows their UK Companies House roles and LEI register links alongside their current job and company, work history, education, public social and professional profiles, news and web mentions from a live web search, and any public scam or fraud warnings, with phone and email checks on the contact details you were given. That tells you whether the director is a real person with a track record or just a name on a form. The person is never told you searched, and if we can't find the right person, the report says so.

How do I find who owns a company in the EU?

In the EU, directors and legal representatives are public in every national business register, but beneficial owners are now available only to people with a legitimate interest. Start with the European e-Justice "Find a company" service, which searches the registers of all EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, then open the national register (the Handelsregister in Germany, Infogreffe in France, the KVK in the Netherlands, and so on) for officers and filings.

Beneficial ownership is different. On 22 November 2022 the Court of Justice of the EU ruled, in joined cases C-37/20 and C-601/20, that giving the general public access to beneficial ownership registers was a disproportionate interference with privacy and data protection rights, and Luxembourg and the Netherlands restricted access almost immediately (eucrim). The EU's sixth anti-money-laundering directive replaced open access with a "legitimate interest" test: journalists, civil society organizations and academics working on money laundering are presumed to have one, member states must transpose the operational rules by July 2026, and register authorities will have to answer requests within 12 working days. As of 2025, 14 EU countries already ran legitimate-interest regimes, with widely varying criteria (Transparency International).

The EU's Beneficial Ownership Registers Interconnection System (BORIS) links the national registers in one search by company name or registration number; where you're authorized to access a register, you can order the documents and download them for six days. Italy's register wasn't connected as of the portal's listing. If you're a business doing due diligence rather than a journalist, your route is usually to ask the counterparty for its beneficial ownership declaration, which it must hold anyway.

How do I find a company's parent with an LEI lookup?

The Global LEI Index is a free search, with no registration, of every Legal Entity Identifier, and it shows "who owns whom" for companies that have one. Each LEI record carries the entity's legal name, registered address and business register ID and, where reported, Level 2 data: the entity's direct accounting consolidating parent and its ultimate accounting consolidating parent (GLEIF).

Read it with two caveats. A parent's name appears only if the parent has an LEI itself; if the parent is a private holding company without one, you won't see it named. And parent data has only been collected since May 2017. LEIs are common for banks, funds, listed companies and anyone active in financial markets, and much rarer for small local businesses, so "no LEI" means nothing on its own.

How do I search companies and directors across countries?

Use OpenCorporates, which aggregates data from more than 140 government registries and lets you search companies and officers across jurisdictions in one query. It's the fastest way to spot that a director of a London company also runs entities in Delaware, Cyprus and Dubai, or that a "group" is really one person and a mail-forwarding address.

Treat it as a map, not the territory: confirm anything important in the official register, which may be more current. Our guide on how to check if a company is legit covers VAT, LEI and domain checks on the company itself.

How do I read a director's track record?

A director's track record is the list of companies they've run, how long each lasted and how each ended, read against the dates of their appointments and resignations. One failed company is business. A pattern is a warning.

What you found	What it likely means	What to do
Two or three companies over 15 years, all active or sold	An ordinary business career	Proceed. Confirm their role with a name search.
Several companies in the same trade, each dissolved after 1 to 3 years, a new one formed each time	A phoenix pattern: debts left behind, trading resumed under a new name	Ask for trade references and pay on delivery, or walk away.
Resigned weeks before a company entered liquidation	Possibly stepping away from a failure before it became public	Ask what happened. Read the liquidator's reports in the filing history.
Appears on the disqualified directors register	Banned from running a company for the period shown	Do not deal with them as a director.
Dozens of current appointments	A nominee or formation agent, not the real controller	Find the PSC or beneficial owner instead.
No trace of the person outside the register	Could be private, could be invented	Ask for a video call and ID before any money moves.

If this is a potential partner or investor rather than a supplier, our guide on how to vet a business partner adds court records, references and sanctions checks. For a new client, see how to check a new client before you start.

What are the red flags when checking who's behind a company?

The red flags are mismatches between the register and the story you've been told, and people who leave no trace outside the register.

The company was incorporated weeks ago but claims years of trading, or has had a new name every year.
The registered office is a mail-forwarding address shared with hundreds of other companies, and the "head office" on the website is a stock photo.
The directors are nominees or a formation agent, and no PSC or owner is identified.
The owner is another company in a jurisdiction that publishes no ownership data, which is owned by another, which is owned by another.
Officers who don't exist online: no work history, no professional profile, no mentions, or a profile created last month.
Overdue accounts, a strike-off notice, or a director who resigned right before an insolvency.
A director who is disqualified, bankrupt or on a sanctions list.
The person you're dealing with isn't on the register at all and can't explain their authority to sign.

Checking a company's directors is a normal, proportionate business check. Keep it to the public record and the people's professional footprint. Search A-Z is not a consumer reporting agency and can't be used for hiring, tenant screening, credit or insurance decisions.

The bottom line

Start in the official register where the company was formed: a US state search gives you the agent and often the managers, Companies House gives you every director and PSC for free, and EU registers give you the directors, with beneficial owners behind a legitimate-interest test. Follow corporate owners upward with the LEI register and OpenCorporates, read each director's other appointments and the disqualification register, and confirm the people are real before money moves.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find out who owns an LLC?

Search the Secretary of State's database in the state where the LLC was formed. Some states, such as Arizona, list members or managers; Florida typically shows managers; Delaware, Wyoming and New Mexico show little beyond the registered agent. The federal beneficial ownership database isn't public, and since 2025 US companies don't file into it. For a private LLC, ask the company for its operating agreement or a signed ownership statement.

Is the owner of a company public information in the UK?

Largely yes. Companies House publishes every director, current and resigned, and the persons with significant control: anyone with more than 25% of the shares or voting rights, the power to appoint or remove most of the board, or significant influence or control. Shareholder lists appear in confirmation statements. It's all free to search.

Can I find out who owns a company in Europe?

You can find the directors and legal representatives in every national business register, searchable through the EU's e-Justice portal. Beneficial owners are restricted: since the Court of Justice's 2022 ruling, access requires a legitimate interest, which journalists, civil society and academics working on money laundering are presumed to have under the sixth anti-money-laundering directive. Businesses doing due diligence usually ask the counterparty for its beneficial ownership declaration.

What is a person with significant control (PSC)?

A PSC is someone who holds more than 25% of a UK company's shares or voting rights, has the right to appoint or remove a majority of its directors, or otherwise exercises significant influence or control, directly or through another company. Companies must identify their PSCs and report them to Companies House, where they appear on the public register.

How do I check if a director is disqualified?

Search the Companies House register of disqualified company directors, which is free and shows the person's name, why they were disqualified and when the ban began. For very recent cases, check the Insolvency Service's online service. In 2025/26 the Insolvency Service disqualified 1,158 directors in Great Britain.

What is an LEI and does every company have one?

A Legal Entity Identifier is a 20-character code for companies active in financial markets, searchable free on GLEIF's Global LEI Index. The record shows the entity's legal name, address and register ID and, where reported, its direct and ultimate parent. Most small local businesses don't have one, so a missing LEI isn't a red flag on its own.

Will a director know I looked them up?

No. Searching Companies House, a Secretary of State database, OpenCorporates or GLEIF leaves no trace the person can see, and a Search A-Z business search never tells the person you searched. The exception is professional networks that show profile views, so browse those in private mode if you'd rather not be seen.

Sources

Figures are the latest published by each source when this guide was updated. Reported fraud losses are a floor: most fraud is never reported.

Who owns a company? How to find the real people behind a business and check a director