Legal Entity Registration

Register-anchored legal entity identity

The master identity of the registered legal person is the pair (registration authority, identifier assigned by that authority). Locally assigned surrogate keys are subordinate and must be flagged as such. LEI reference data models this explicitly as RegistrationAuthorityID plus RegistrationAuthorityEntityID, and the governed authority list exists precisely because a bare registration number is ambiguous across 232 jurisdictions.

1. Which register or registration authority holds the authoritative record for this entity, and what identifier does it assign? identity
2. Is the register-assigned identifier stable, reused after dissolution, or changed on conversion or migration? identity
3. When no register-assigned identifier exists, which fallback identity is used and how is it qualified? identity
4. How is the identifier syntactically validated before acceptance? validation

Cross-scheme identifier alignment

Additional identifier schemes attached to the same legal person (LEI, EUID, VAT or tax number, D-U-N-S, GLN, national scheme numbers) together with the scheme qualification that keeps them unambiguous, and the precedence rules when they disagree. ISO/IEC 6523 exists because an organization identifier without its issuing scheme cannot be interpreted.

1. Which additional identifier schemes are recorded for this entity and which authority issues each? interoperability
2. Does each alternate identifier denote the same legal person, or a different unit such as an establishment, VAT group or branch? relationship
3. What is the precedence order when alternate identifiers disagree with the authoritative register record? decision
4. How is a global identifier's own registration status reconciled with the underlying register record? state

Legal name, variants and name history

The legal name exactly as recorded by the authoritative register, plus typed variants (transliterations, trading names, abbreviations, previous legal names) each with dated validity and an evidencing filing. Reference-data formats keep other names and transliterated names in separate typed containers because collapsing them destroys the distinction between the legally operative name and a convenience label.

1. What is the legal name exactly as recorded by the authoritative register, including script, diacritics and legal-form suffix? definition
2. Which other names are recorded and how is each typed? classification
3. When did each name become effective, when did it cease, and what filing evidences the change? temporal
4. Does the register enforce name uniqueness, and is the name reserved or in dispute? constraint

Entity legal form and jurisdiction of formation

The legal form under which the entity exists and the jurisdiction whose law constitutes it. These are interdependent: a legal form has meaning only under local legislation, which is why the governed code list carries local-language names and why a Dutch BV must not be normalised into a German GmbH. Sub-national formation jurisdictions are the norm in federal states.

1. Under which jurisdiction's law was the entity formed, at what sub-national level, and how is that coded? spatial
2. What is the entity's legal form, expressed both as a local-language name and as a governed code? classification
3. Has the legal form changed over time, and what conversion event caused the change? lifecycle
4. If no governed code exists for the form, which placeholder and free-text value are used? exception

Entity category and economic activity classification

The structural category of the registration record (general entity, branch, fund, sole proprietor, resident government entity, international organization) and the declared economic activity codes. Category is not cosmetic: it changes which registration rules apply and how other fields must be read, and public-authority policy has repeatedly added categories rather than treating them as free text.

1. What category and sub-category does this registration record fall into? classification
2. Which economic activity classification codes are recorded, under which scheme and version? classification
3. Is the declared activity self-reported or verified, and how often is it refreshed? evidence
4. Does the category change the applicable registration rules or the meaning of other fields? constraint

Legal personality and capacity

A registered legal person is a juristic person distinct from its members, able to acquire rights and assume obligations in its own name. UNCITRAL treats this as affirmative asset partitioning and recommends that members are not personally liable solely by reason of membership. UNCITRAL insolvency guidance adds that a corporation obtains personality by a legal process and enjoys perpetuity independent of changing members. ISO 17442 requires the party to have the legal right in its jurisdiction to enter independently into legal contracts.

1. Does this subject have legal personality distinct from its members or controllers under the law of the formation jurisdiction? definition
2. Which capacities does the law confer on this legal person, and are any of them restricted by statute, objects or duration? constraint
3. Are members or shareholders shielded from the entity's debts solely by reason of membership, and under which legal form rule? classification
4. At what event time did legal personality attach, and is registration constitutive or merely declaratory in this jurisdiction? lifecycle

Registration authority identification

Identification of the organization operating the register, the specific register instance, its statutory mandate and its territorial or sectoral coverage, distinguishing a constitutive registration authority from a validation-only source. The existence of a governed list of more than a thousand registers across 232 jurisdictions shows that 'the register' is never inferable from the country alone.

1. Which organization operates the register, and under what statutory mandate? authority
2. Which coded entry from a governed registration-authority list applies, and at what list version? identity
3. Does the register cover the whole jurisdiction, or only a sub-national or sectoral segment? spatial
4. Is this source constitutive for registration, or is it consulted only to validate? authority

Register legal effect: constitutive versus declaratory

What entry on the register legally accomplishes: whether legal personality arises from registration or is merely recorded, from when disclosed particulars are opposable to third parties, what liability or warranty the register accepts, and whether parallel registers can conflict. This distinction determines whether absence from a register is evidence of non-existence or merely of non-disclosure.

1. Does registration create legal personality, or record an entity that already exists? definition
2. Which particulars are opposable to third parties once disclosed, and from when? authority
3. What is the register's liability regime for inaccurate entries, and is the data warranted? constraint
4. Are there parallel registers in the same jurisdiction whose entries could conflict? exception

Registration act dates and record currency

The dated act of registration and how current the record is: entity creation date, the register's own initial registration date, last update, next renewal or confirmation date, and — critically — the separation of event time, register-recorded time and our observation time. Reference-data formats keep creation date and initial registration date as distinct fields precisely because they routinely differ.

1. What is the entity creation date, and how does it differ from the register's initial registration date? temporal
2. When was the register record last updated, and when did we last observe or retrieve it? provenance
3. What periodic confirmation or renewal obligation applies, and when is it next due? process
4. How are date-only register values reconciled with timestamped ingestion records? temporal

Mandatory disclosure particulars and filing obligations

The particulars and documents the entity must disclose to the register at formation and on a recurring basis, the consequence of default, and the disclosure level applied to each. EU company law makes disclosure through national registers compulsory and interconnects it cross-border, while registry guidance treats the minimum registration dataset as a deliberate policy choice rather than a technical accident.

1. Which particulars must be disclosed at registration under the applicable law? requirement
2. Which documents must be filed and how frequently? process
3. What happens when a filing is late or missing, and how is that reflected in the record? exception
4. Which filings are publicly disclosed in full and which only as metadata? access

Registration status and entity status

Two distinct axes that must not be conflated: the legal state of the entity in the register (active, dissolved, in liquidation, converted), and the state of the registration record as a data object (published, pending, lapsed, retired, duplicate). An entity can be perfectly alive while its identifier record has lapsed, and a record can remain published after the entity is dissolved.

1. What is the entity's status in the authoritative register and which code list defines it? state
2. What is the status of the registration record as a data object, independent of the entity's legal state? state
3. Which status transitions are legally possible, and which are terminal? lifecycle
4. What supplementary status detail qualifies the headline status? state

Compliance standing and involuntary removal risk

Signals of standing short of a formal status change: overdue filings, published proposals to strike off or dissolve, disputed registered office, insolvency-history and charges flags, and administrative penalties. These are leading indicators an operating agent must act on before the status field changes.

1. Are there active proposals to strike off, dissolve or suspend the entity, and when were they published? state
2. Which filings are currently overdue and by how long? measurement
3. Does the record carry flags for insolvency history, registered charges, or a disputed registered office? quality
4. What remediation restores good standing, and by when? process

Legal entity event record and effective dating

Discrete typed events recorded with an effective date in the legal jurisdiction, a date recorded by the register, a completion status and supporting validation documents. Public-authority policy explicitly separates events that alter reference data from those that retire or create identifiers, and prioritises frequent events such as name changes and mergers over rare ones such as reverse takeovers.

1. What type of legal entity event occurred, per a governed event type list? event
2. What is the event's effective date in the jurisdiction, the date the register recorded it, and the time we ingested it? temporal
3. What is the event's completion status? state
4. Which documents validate the event and which fields does it change? evidence

Succession: merger, division and conversion

Events that create, absorb or transform legal persons and the predecessor/successor links they generate, including cross-border operations where two registers must notify each other. Organization vocabularies model this as change events with original and resulting organizations rather than as an in-place update, which is the only representation that survives later audit.

1. Which predecessor and successor entities are linked by this event, and by which identifiers? relationship
2. Is the operation a merger by absorption, a merger by formation, a division, a spin-off or a conversion? classification
3. Does the operation cross jurisdictions, and which registers must notify each other? interoperability
4. Does the entity's identifier survive the operation, or is a new one assigned and the old one retired? identity

Dissolution, liquidation and restoration

The end and possible reinstatement of registered existence: voluntary and compulsory dissolution, liquidation and insolvency proceedings with appointed office-holders, deregistration, and restoration to the register. Restoration is a genuine counterexample to naive terminal-state modelling: a dissolved entity can be brought back, so 'dissolved' is not always absorbing.

1. On what date and on what ground did registered existence end? lifecycle
2. Which insolvency or liquidation proceeding is open, who is the appointed office-holder, and what are its dates? process
3. Can the entity be restored or reinstated, under what conditions and within what period? exception
4. What happens to the record and its identifiers after dissolution? retention

Registered office and address set

The addresses attached to the registration record: the legal or registered address that has legal effect for service of documents, the headquarters address, and other recorded addresses — all distinguished from operating sites. Registers publish an explicit flag when a registered office is in dispute, which shows the address is a contested legal fact rather than descriptive metadata.

1. What is the legal or registered address of record and which components does the register mandate? spatial
2. How does the registered address differ from the headquarters address and from operating sites? composition
3. Is the address usable for legal service, and is it a third-party or agent address? authority
4. Is the recorded address disputed, unverified or subject to change proceedings? quality

Branch and establishment registration

Registration records for branches and establishments that are not separate legal persons but carry their own register entries, identifiers and disclosure duties in a host jurisdiction. Relationship data recognises an international branch relationship as a distinct type, and national registers hold explicit branch and foreign-company sub-structures pointing back to the home register.

1. Is this record a branch or establishment rather than an autonomous legal person, and which head office does it belong to? classification
2. Which host-jurisdiction register holds the branch record and what identifier does it assign? identity
3. Which particulars must the branch disclose locally versus rely on from the head office register? requirement
4. How is closure or dissolution of the head office propagated to the branch record? event

Redomiciliation and foreign qualification

Transfer of the registered seat between jurisdictions, and authorization to do business in jurisdictions other than that of formation, with or without continuity of legal personality. Register status vocabularies carry values for transfer out of the jurisdiction, confirming that jurisdiction of formation is a dated fact rather than a constant.

1. Has the entity transferred its registered seat, from which jurisdiction to which, and on what date? lifecycle
2. Is legal personality continuous across the transfer, or was the entity re-formed? definition
3. In which additional jurisdictions is the entity qualified or authorized to do business, and under what identifier? spatial
4. Which identifiers are retired, retained or newly assigned as a result? identity

Parent, group and structural relationships

Links between registered entities as reported to registers and identifier systems: direct and ultimate accounting-consolidating parents, international branch to head office, and fund, sub-fund and feeder-to-master links. Each carries a validity period, an accounting or document-filing period, a corroboration level and, where no parent is reported, a coded reporting exception. Consolidation-based parenthood is not the same as legal ownership and must not be presented as such.

1. Which direct and ultimate consolidating parents are reported, and by which identifiers? relationship
2. Over what period is each relationship valid, and which accounting or filing period does the evidence cover? temporal
3. What corroboration level supports the relationship and which documents validate it? evidence
4. If no parent is reported, which reporting exception applies? exception
5. How does this reported relationship differ from a statistical enterprise group? interoperability

Beneficial ownership register linkage

The pointer from the registration record to the mechanism holding beneficial ownership or persons-with-significant-control information, its holding mechanism type and its access regime — the linkage only, never the ownership content. International standards allow a registry or an alternative mechanism, and the access regime is materially narrower than for core company particulars and has been changed by litigation and by national rule changes.

1. Which mechanism holds beneficial ownership information for this entity? composition
2. What identifier links the registration record to the beneficial ownership record? identity
3. Who may access the beneficial ownership record, and on what legal basis? access
4. How current must the linked information be, and when was it last confirmed? quality

Officers and authority to represent

Registered officers and representatives and the derived question of who may validly bind the entity, recorded as dated registration facts plus evidence of authority for a specific act. Registers publish suppression regimes for officer details, so the presence of a role does not guarantee the presence of the person's particulars.

1. Which officer or representative roles are recorded in the register, with what appointment and cessation dates? ownership
2. What representation rule applies — sole, joint, or limited by class of act — and where is it stated? authority
3. How is authority to act evidenced for a specific transaction, and when was it verified? evidence
4. Are any officer details suppressed or protected, and under what regime? privacy

Registration evidence documents and extracts

Documents that evidence registration facts — certificates of incorporation or good standing, dated register extracts, gazette publications and cross-border company certificates — each speaking as of a point in time and each requiring authentication before reliance. Extracts age: an extract is a dated snapshot, not a standing truth, which is why an as-of timestamp and a freshness window are mandatory.

1. Which document evidences each registration fact, and who issued it? evidence
2. As of what date do the extract's contents speak, and how long is it treated as current? temporal
3. Is the document authenticated, and how is authenticity checked? validation
4. Is a translation or legalization required for cross-border use? interoperability

Validation sources and corroboration level

How each recorded fact was validated: which source was consulted, what role it plays, which validation authority and local identifier were used, and what corroboration level was achieved. Corroboration is graded, not binary, and the grade must travel with the data.

1. Which source was consulted to validate each field, and is it the authoritative register or a secondary source? provenance
2. What corroboration level does the record achieve? quality
3. Which validation authority and which local identifier were used for corroboration? authority
4. How often must validation be repeated and what triggers re-validation? process

Data quality, discrepancies and challenge process

Detection, reporting and resolution of divergence between the register record and other authoritative or self-reported sources, including statutory discrepancy-reporting duties on obliged entities and the register's own correction or challenge procedure. Unresolved conflicts must be represented explicitly rather than silently resolved by picking a value.

1. Which discrepancies exist between the register record and other sources? quality
2. Is there a duty to report the discrepancy, to whom, and within what deadline? requirement
3. What process corrects an erroneous register entry, and who may initiate it? process
4. Which quality checks run automatically and at what thresholds? validation
5. How is an unresolved conflict represented so downstream consumers are not misled? decision

Public disclosure tiers and access conditions

Who may see what: the free-to-all core that registry guidance says should be available to everyone without discrimination and at low or zero cost, versus fee-bearing, registration-gated, legitimate-interest and competent-authority-only tiers. Reuse licence conditions attach to disclosed data and constrain redistribution.

1. Which fields and documents are public without restriction, and which require registration, fee or a legitimate-interest test? access
2. Which categories of requester are recognised and how are they authenticated? security
3. What licence or reuse conditions attach to the disclosed data? ownership
4. What must be logged when restricted content is accessed? evidence

Personal data in registration records

Personal data unavoidably present in registration records — officers, agents, and registered addresses that are also private residences — and the constraints that follow. Settled case law holds there is no general right to erasure from a companies register even after the company ceases to exist, because no suitable maximum retention period can be identified, while a case-by-case right to object may exist; suppression regimes operate as the practical remedy.

1. Which fields in the registration record contain personal data, and whose? privacy
2. Which suppression, protection or redaction regimes are available, and how are they flagged? exception
3. Can a data subject obtain erasure or restriction, and what is the settled position? retention
4. How is personal data handled when the record is redistributed or cached downstream? security

Provenance, source attribution and observation time

Full attribution of every recorded fact to its source, retrieval method, retrieving agent and time, keeping three clocks separate: when the event took legal effect, when the register recorded it, and when we observed it. Collapsing these makes it impossible to reconstruct what was knowable at a past decision point.

1. From which source system, endpoint or file was each fact obtained, and at which version? provenance
2. What are the event time, the register's recorded time and our observation time for each fact? temporal
3. Which agent performed the retrieval and under what authorization? authority
4. How is the retrieved payload preserved so the assertion can be re-checked later? evidence

Record history, retention and deletion constraints

How prior states are kept, how long records survive dissolution, and where deletion is constrained. Public-authority policy for the global identifier system requires data history alongside events, and case law establishes that no single maximum retention period can be identified for register data, so retention must be declared per jurisdiction rather than assumed.

1. Which historical versions of the record are retained and at what granularity? retention
2. For how long after dissolution must the record be retained, and by whom? retention
3. Under what circumstances may data be deleted or de-published, and what tombstone remains? exception
4. How are retention conflicts between register duties and privacy demands resolved? decision

Interoperability mappings and exchange projections

Alignment of this model to external vocabularies and exchange protocols, recorded as version-pinned mappings with explicit conflicts rather than conformance claims. Register-to-register exchange uses service-based electronic communication with standard protocols and defined message types, which the model must be able to feed without becoming coupled to any one of them.

1. Which external vocabularies and schemas is this model aligned to, and at which versions? interoperability
2. Which fields map cleanly, which map with loss, and which have no counterpart? validation
3. Which register-to-register or downstream exchange protocols must be supported, and what message types do they define? process
4. Where do external models conflict semantically, and how is the conflict recorded rather than hidden? decision