what are companies house?

[tonyjai]

what are they and what do they do? thanks.

 

[SOCRATES]

Companies House in City Road is responsible for keeping records of all Limited Companies on the Limited Company Register, whether they be private or public. All annual reports, balance sheets, directors' reports, chairmens' statements, profit and loss accounts, details of all acquisitions and disposals, charges, mortgages, liens of every sort, details of share structure including new shares issued, or debentures, or mortgage debentures, and so on. This is done from year to year and a record kept of the company's progress in microfiche form which can be printed. Also this building used to house the register of business names, which is now defunct. Anyone is allowed to make a search on a company on payment of a fee. Searches are best conducted via Search Agents, who are profeassionally equipped to do so, but members of the public are not disbarred.

 

[Mayfly]

Try this: http://www.companieshouse.co.uk/

Cheers

Mayfly

 

[tonyjai]

why are searches best to be made via a search agent ( is checksure.biz one?)and not via companieshouse.co.uk? i believe that a fee is present when carrying out these searches. i remember when i was in college we used checksure to check a haulage firm. are there only one companieshouse that a limited firm registers to? is it a goverment department or privately owned? thanks.

 

[SOCRATES]

Nothing stops you as a private person going along to Companies House to physically carry out a search yourself, but you have to go there. If you cannot go there, then someone else has to go for you. It is therefore best in those circumstances to employ the services of a search agent.Search Agents handle hundreds of enquiries a day as that is their main business. A Search Agent will carry out a search in a professional manner and will be very thorough.There is only one Companies House, but there are different departments and branches. Other departments for instance list defunct companies. Companies House as far as I know has always been a Government Department , unless it has been privatised and this I cannot tell you because I don't know. There is a fee involved when making a search I believe only if documents are extracted as a result of that search if you do it yourself. There is no reason why you cannot have a go yourself. I used to make a lot of searches for my own use when researching the accounts of quoted public companies as a useful adjunct to the Balance Sheet, etc., in the days before I abandoned Fundamental Analysis in favour of Technical Analysis. As for Checksure Biz, I cannot tell you because I don't know since my perimeter of interest does not reach that far. You had best make your own enquiries in this regard.

 

[Roberto]

are there only one companieshouse that a limited firm registers to?

I believe there are 2. One for England/Wales, and one for Scotland.

is it a goverment department or privately owned?

It's a Civil Service department; it's actually part of the Department of Trade and Industry.

 

[Mayfly]

If you want to find out more about a company, this is a good place to start:

http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/d8a4d94c948f71e996bed0124f59acfd//wcframe?name=accessCompanyInfo

Enter company no. for preference or name and get the free information. If you want to you can “order information on this company” from the same page. This will give you access to the information that the company has filed at Companies House, which it’s legally obliged to do. The information is extremely cheap ( a couple of pounds), unless that it is you want a list of members as at a certain date: in which case you pay by the “page”. You get the microfiche and hard copy printout of the data that’ll have been filed at Companies House by the Registrars. This will cost circa £17.50 for a plc with circa 450 members, OK? Obviously, this will include the nominees too, which is not particularly helpful.

Search companies buy this info in bulk and sell it on to the public at retail, which you're not obviously obliged to pay for if you know where to go: but you do now, don't you?

HTH

Cheers

Mayfly

 

[tonyjai]

hey, many thanks guys.......one last question. I've noticed that on some website such as rolls royce, there are financial data avaible to the public free of charge-is there any differnet from obtaining these p&l account and balance sheet from companies house or a search agent? if there are no difference-why do some people still prefer to pay for company information? do only big companies put their accounts online and not small companies?

 

[Mayfly]

You really don’t have to pay for the glossy reports: it’s purely a matter of good investor relations. Wilink is a good source for UK and US stuff, as you’ll be able to see for yourself here: http://vcall.ar.wilink.com/asp/A502_search_ENG.asp - you can oder a hardcopy and/or download a PDF.

You’ll normally have to pay for “financial analysis” though, a lot of which is collated by Hemscott and Company Refs. If you go to www.hemscott.net you’ll be able to see these – try a free trial - for yourself.

So far as I know there are plenty of other boards where you’ll find this sort of information (Adfvn and Moneyam among others), and you’ll also be able to get it from either one of the Sharescope and Investorease software packages, both of which will (or should) allow you to scan for certain financial criteria.

I don’t use Sharescope, but I’ve used Investorease and Company Refs in the past and I think they’re pretty good for this sort of thing.

do only big companies put their accounts online and not small companies?

It’s a sort of beauty parade really; small companies are generally do well to get a listing on OFEX or the AIM, for example.

HTH

Cheers

Mayfly