who-really-owns-itlisted

# Who really owns it Registries turn a brand into a legal entity with a number, dates, addresses, and named people. The thing nobody tells you first: **registry structure varies enormously by jurisdiction, and that variance is the entire game.** One country publishes full accounts, share registers, and directors' birth dates for free. Its neighbour publishes a name and a status code and charges for the rest. Your research strategy is not "look up the company" — it is "work out what this jurisdiction lets me see, then plan around the gap". Second thing: search by **company number**, not name. The number is issued once and persists through renames, mergers, and dissolution. The name does not. ## Triage | What you hold | Start here | Why | |---|---|---| | A name, unknown jurisdiction | OpenCorporates as a cross-jurisdiction index | Finds candidate entities and tells you which registry to go to. Not the source of truth | | A name, known jurisdiction | The national registry directly | Always richer and fresher than any aggregator | | A company number | The issuing registry | Durable, unambiguous, no name-matching problem | | A US-listed company | SEC EDGAR, including its full-text search across filings | Filings dwarf what any company registry holds | | A financial-market participant | GLEIF's LEI search | LEI records include direct and ultimate parent relationships, which most registries do not | | A person, want their companies | Officer-name search in the registry (see belo