The mercantileregistry and the property registry: Information avaliable to all
The publication by the Mercantile Registry of information about a company, about its shareholders or about persons related to it, as well as the publication by the Property Registry of any information about a real estate – such as its ownership or encumbrances-, may be very useful to third parties interested in these companies or real estate. Yet this information can also be harmful for these companies or for these real estate owners. Below we explain some situations in which some registered information, published by the corresponding Registry and thus available to all, can affect negatively on companies or real estate owners:
- Companies that have not presented the Annual Accounts on time or have not been able to register them due to defects in their presentation. Apart from the fact that these companies will not be able to register deeds, not having presented the Annual Accounts gives a bad image to a company before interested third parties such as banks, reporting companies or clients.
- Companies with negative balance sheets, either due to losses in the last fiscal year or with negative results accumulated from previous years. In this case, interested third parties can act in several ways not wished by companies: banks may deny or restrict credit options, and reporting companies may worsen the risk rating of these companies and therefore affect negatively on their relation with suppliers.
- Reporting companies can obtain lists of companies and their respective directors. In certain cases this situation can be counterproductive, for instance, if any of these companies has negative results or has filed for bankruptcy and its directors simply do not want to be listed as directors of that company.
In addition to all of this, it should be taken into account that the Mercantile Registry or the Property Registry are not the only sources of information available to reporting companies: official announcements published on the Internet about debts or legal proceedings, as well as press releases and information obtained through other media, are easily accessible.
The trend towards corporate transparency is unstoppable, so measures must be taken to avoid the publication of information that may affect negatively companies, especially in the official registers due to the difficulty to remove that information once it has been published.
From AGL we can help you with incidences that you may have before the Mercantile Registry or the Property Registry.
