Most UK companies and LLPs are required to find out and record details of the individuals or legal entities that have significant beneficial ownership or control over them. The information must be recorded in the company’s register of people with significant control (PSC register) as part of its statutory books.

This note concentrates on what companies incorporated and registered in England and Wales must do to comply with the PSC regime. The requirements for LLPs are similar, as are the requirements for Societates Europaeae, unregistered companies, Scottish partnerships and companies incorporated in other parts of the UK. To keep this note relevant to most readers we have not extended it to companies which have opted to keep their PSC registers at Companies House.

Companies which do not have to have a PSC register

The following UK companies are not required to keep a PSC register:

  • companies with voting shares admitted to trading on an EEA regulated market (such as the London Stock Exchange Main Market); and
  • companies which have voting shares admitted to trading on other specified markets in Israel, Japan, Switzerland and the US.

Those companies are all subject to other rules that require them to disclose their owners/controllers.

Even though UK-incorporated AIM companies are also subject to other rules that require them to disclose their owners/controllers, namely the provisions of AIM Rule 17 and chapter 5 of the Financial Conduct Authority’s Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules sourcebook (DTR5), AIM companies must also comply with these PSC rules.

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