What a private company record can and cannot tell you

There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes from buying company data. The file arrives, the row count is impressive, and then you start calling. The first address is an accountant’s office. The second company was renamed three years ago. The third turns out to be a holding entity whose only asset is a shareholding in the business you actually wanted. By the tenth row you are doing the research yourself, which is what you paid to avoid.

None of this is fraud. It is the predictable result of treating a company register as a list of businesses. It is not one, and the difference is worth setting out precisely.

What a register actually proves

That an entity was incorporated. This is the one thing a registry entry establishes beyond argument. There is a legal person, it has a number, and it came into existence on a date. That is genuinely valuable — it makes every other field checkable against a source — and it is much less than most people assume.

Its current status. Active, dormant, in liquidation, dissolved, struck off. Reliable, and the single most under-used field in company data. A large fraction of any registry population is not trading, and a list that does not filter on status is mostly not a list of businesses.

Its officers, as filed. Directors and company secretaries, with appointment and resignation dates. Accurate as at the last filing, which in some jurisdictions can be a year ago.

Its registered office. Accurate and frequently useless. A registered office is a legal address for service, and for a great many small companies it is their accountant’s. Treating it as a trading address is the most common single error in company targeting, and it is why a serious record keeps the two as separate fields.

What a register does not prove

That a business exists. Incorporation is cheap and, in several of the jurisdictions worth covering, close to instant. Dormant entities, name-protection shells, single-purpose vehicles and long-abandoned companies sit on the register alongside real operating businesses and look identical in a bulk export.

What the company does. The standard industry code is chosen at incorporation and is rarely revisited. A business that started as a print shop and now does packaging design will still file under printing, because nobody has any reason to update it. The company’s own description of itself is a far better field, and it lives on its website rather than on the register.

Which entity you should contact. Groups are ordinary, not exotic. A single trading business may sit under a holding company, an operating company and a property entity, all separately registered and all appearing as three companies in an export. Resolving that to one business, and recording which entity is which, is the work.

Where financial data quietly becomes an estimate

This is where company databases most often stop being factual, and it is worth understanding the mechanism rather than just distrusting the number.

In most jurisdictions, small companies are exempt from filing full accounts. What reaches the public register is an abridged balance sheet: some assets, some liabilities, no profit and loss. Turnover is not there. Neither, usually, is headcount in any precise form.

A database that nonetheless shows revenue for a large share of small private companies is modelling it — typically from sector, employee band and balance sheet size — and the model is usually reasonable in aggregate and unreliable for any individual company. That would be fine if the modelled figures were labelled. Very often they are not, so a user cannot tell an estimate from a filed fact, which makes the whole column unciteable in front of a client.

The honest alternative is a blank field. A blank says the company has not published it. It is less satisfying and much more useful.

Where jurisdiction changes everything

Coverage quality is not uniform and cannot be, because disclosure rules are not.

The UK’s Companies House is unusually open: filings, officers and persons with significant control are public and free. That openness is also why the UK register is so noisy — the same low barrier that makes data available makes incorporation trivial.

Singapore’s ACRA and Hong Kong’s Companies Registry are comprehensive, with most detail behind a per-document fee. Australia’s ASIC holds company existence and officers, but most proprietary companies are exempt from lodging financial statements at all.

The United States has no federal company register. Ground truth is fifty state systems of varying quality and searchability, which is why any product claiming uniform US private company coverage deserves a specific question about where it came from.

A directory should tell you which market a record came from and what that market discloses, rather than presenting a uniform schema that hides the fact that half the columns are empty in half the countries.

Four questions to ask before buying any company file

1. How many rows are actually trading? Not active on the register — trading. If the seller has not made that distinction, they have sold you the register.
2. Which fields are filed and which are modelled? Ask for it field by field. A vendor who cannot answer quickly has not thought about it, or would rather you did not.
3. Are registered and trading addresses separate fields? If they are merged, the file will send your outreach to accountants.
4. What does a blank mean? It should mean not published. If blanks are filled with estimates, every number in the file inherits the uncertainty of the worst one.

A smaller file of confirmed trading companies beats a larger one you have to re-verify. That is not a consolation for having fewer rows; it is the reason to buy research instead of an export.

Sources

1. Companies House — Government of the United Kingdom; accessed September 6, 2026
2. Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority — Government of Singapore; accessed September 6, 2026
3. Australian Securities and Investments Commission — Government of Australia; accessed September 6, 2026