How to Find Who Owns a Company in the UK
Start at Companies House, then read the right two filings. The free register names a UK company’s directors and its people with significant control, and the confirmation statement lists its shareholders. Between them you can usually identify who owns a company in minutes. The care is in the interpretation: a PSC is not automatically the owner, a shareholder is not automatically in control, and the register is not independently verified.
Start with Companies House
The Companies House register is free, public and searchable by company name or number. For any UK-registered company you get incorporation details and status, registered office, directors and their appointment history, the PSC register, the confirmation statement, accounts, charges, and a complete filing history.
Confirm you have the right entity before reading anything. Similar names are common, and groups routinely register defensive near-duplicates. Match on company number, and check the status: a dissolved company tells you about the past, not the present.
How PSC information works
Since 2016, most UK companies must keep a register of people with significant control and file it at Companies House. Someone is a PSC if they meet any of these conditions:
- Holds more than 25% of the shares
- Holds more than 25% of the voting rights
- Can appoint or remove a majority of the board
- Otherwise exercises significant influence or control
- Exercises any of the above over a trust or firm that itself meets a condition
Where the controlling party is a company rather than a person, it is recorded as a relevant legal entity — an RLE — provided it is itself subject to equivalent disclosure. That RLE is the handle you follow up the chain.
Read the PSC entry precisely. It records the nature of control, in bands: over 25% up to 50%, over 50% up to 75%, or 75% and above. A PSC at the lowest band holds a substantial minority — not the company.
Shareholders vs people with significant control
These answer different questions and are filed in different places.
The PSC register answers who controls the company, in bands, including control that does not come from shares at all.
The confirmation statement answers who holds the shares. For a company with share capital it includes a statement of capital and shareholder information — a full list at least every three years, with changes reported in between. That gives you exact holdings rather than bands, and it captures holders below the 25% PSC threshold.
A shareholder with 10% appears in the confirmation statement and not in the PSC register. Someone with a contractual right to appoint the board may appear as a PSC while holding no shares at all. To describe ownership properly you generally need both.
How to identify a parent or ultimate owner
Where the PSC is an RLE, open that entity’s record and repeat. Chains of three or four companies are ordinary, particularly where there is a holding company, a trading subsidiary and a financing vehicle.
Two situations break the chain. If it leaves the UK, the overseas entity may have no equivalent public filing, and you fall back on group accounts, the corporate website and the local register. If the company is listed, there is often no PSC at all — a widely held plc has no single controlling party — and you use the annual report’s substantial shareholdings section and major holding notifications instead.
Group accounts are the underused source here. Consolidated accounts normally name the ultimate parent and the ultimate controlling party in the notes, which resolves in one document what the register makes you walk.
When annual reports and filings are needed
Go past the register when the company is listed, when it is a UK subsidiary of a foreign group, when the structure involves trusts or nominees, or when ownership recently changed and filings lag.
Useful filings: the confirmation statement for shareholders; the annual accounts, whose notes name the parent and ultimate controlling party; charges, which reveal who has lent against the business; and for listed companies the annual report and the regulatory announcements covering major holdings.
Verification checklist
- Confirm the company number and that the status is active.
- Read the PSC register, noting the control band and whether each PSC is a person or an RLE.
- Open the most recent confirmation statement for actual shareholdings.
- Follow any RLE up the chain until it leaves the UK register or reaches a listed parent.
- Check the latest accounts for the ultimate parent and ultimate controlling party.
- Note the date of every source, and state it.
One caution throughout: Companies House does not verify most of what is filed, and says so. Identity verification for directors and PSCs is being introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, which will tighten this, but the register still records what companies assert. Where a claim matters, corroborate it against a second primary source — the accounts, the annual report, or the company’s own disclosures.