Beneficial Ownership
DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE BENEFICIAL OWNERSHIP OF A COMPANY
Author: Dr Geraldine Spiteri Lucas
IN TODAY’S WORLD, IT IS CRUCIAL THAT COMPANIES KNOW WITH WHOM THEY ARE DEALING, NOT JUST KNOWING THE NAME OF THE COMPANY OR WHO THE OFFICERS ARE, BUT THE NATURAL PERSON OWNERS OF THE COMPANY – THE BENEFICIAL OWNERS. TRANSPARENCY IS AN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE AND THIS REQUIRES KNOWLEDGE OF BENEFICIAL OWNERSHIP IN CORPORATE STRUCTURES. Transparency is a critical component of corporate governance because it ensures that all of a company’s actions can be checked at any given time by third parties. One of the main roles of the Registrar of Companies (Registrar) in Malta is to make information public on all Maltese registered companies
and partnerships, including the register on the beneficial owners of companies. The register of beneficial owners is easily accessible by all competent authorities, subject persons and the general public. The portal is https://registry.mbr.mt/ROC/ An ultimate beneficial owner is any natural person who ultimately owns or controls that body corporate or body of persons through direct or indirect ownership of 25% plus 1 or more of the shares, or more than 25% of the voting rights or an ownership interest of more than 25% in that body corporate or body of persons or through control via other means. Senior managing officials can also be treated as beneficial owners where the above criteria cannot be determined. Although the definition of what constitutes a beneficial owner seems to be a straight forward one; collecting, updating, verifying and monitoring all of the information for every beneficial owner of every company is a large-scale effort, for both the practitioners and the authorities. This is because identifying the beneficial owner of a company is, sometimes, not like >>
