A good place to start is the Annual Report, Form 10-K, which includes a detailed history of the business, audited financial statements, executive compensation, a description of products and services, and an annual review of the organization, its operations, and the markets in which the company operates. Form 10-Q is a quarterly report that contains unaudited financial statements and information about a company`s activities over the past three months. 8-K reports are additional filings for specific events such as bankruptcy, asset disposal, executive departures, and other events important to investors. If you can`t find enough information, you should do a domain search. This will tell you at least the registered owner of the company responsible for choosing the domain and registering the contact information. You can even use the WhoIs tool by typing “whois” and the company URL to find out who owns the domain in seconds. Of course, this could lead to a third-party problem that essentially prevents you from learning something new. Therefore, it is not always an effective option. All states recognize a business as a separate legal entity, meaning that it operates separately from its owners. One of the advantages of this is that business owners cannot be held personally liable for the company`s debts, which is one of the biggest benefits of running a business. When it comes to forming this type of legal business structure, most states require you to file the charter or something similar with the Secretary of State.
Once you`ve completed the steps needed to start your business, you may be wondering, “Who owns your business?” Believe it or not, this is a common question among these companies, especially given the fact that a corporation can consist of one shareholder or hundreds of thousands of shareholders. With respect to the second right, all shareholders have voting rights over the members of the board of directors, which gives them some oversight over how the company is run because they run the company in the interest of the shareholders. If, as mentioned above, a shareholder owns a significant number of shares in the company (i.e. 51%), he can even appoint the board of directors himself. Background checks are a bit extreme in some cases, but if you really need to know an owner and a business is ultra-private about that information, this might be the only option. In any case, make sure you choose a reputable company that will help you with this verification so that you can get the best and most reliable information. OpenCorporates is an open source of data for more than 150 million companies. The information comes from the national business registers. The database can include things like when a company was founded, its registered addresses, and the names of directors and officers. It can show the connections between companies. He develops a database of corporate events.
Follow the blog for updates and examples of how media is using OpenCorporates. Journalists, NGOs, academics, and other nonprofit users can request a free API key for the public good. If you want to know who legally owns a business, you can search various public documents to identify the owners of a business.3 min spent reading In many cases, one of the easiest ways to find out who owns a business is to visit the company`s website and go to the “About” page. Some may have an “Employees” page or a “Meet the Team” tab – either way, make sure you look at it first. Also, keep in mind that the CEO may not be the owner and vice versa. Usually, their title will tell you what role they have. If an owner isn`t listed on the site, you may need to do a little more detective work. The National Association of Secretaries of State can direct you to all U.S. state websites (see “Online Commercial Services” in the fine print below after selecting a state). There you`ll find links to places like California Corporation Search and New York Corporation and Business Entity Database. From these state records, you can usually get a corporation`s date of incorporation, its registered addresses, and the names of directors and officers. Note that you need the exact city and state of the company for these queries.
Some industries, such as restaurants, require owners to obtain a license. You can call the regulator and formally ask for the name of the owner. You can also search the agency`s website for an online tool or a database of permits, inspections and licences. Please note that the regulator may or may not disclose the name of the owner. In a B2B setup, companies still need to do a bit of business contact research to create leads for marketing purposes. Entrepreneurs contact each other for possible cooperation within the framework of projects or partnerships. But who really owns the company? This answer depends on the state in which you choose to include. Some might argue that shareholders own the corporation because they have a direct interest in the corporation through shares, voting rights, and other ownership qualities.
