The Luxembourg law of 13 January, passed far too late to fulfil the European Union's deadline, has created a Luxembourg Register of Ultimate Beneficial Owners at last. Registrations will begin on 1st March.

The Bill became law in December 2018 and bodies corporate have until 1 September to comply with it. It transposes parts of the European Union's fourth and fifth Money Laundering Directives into Luxembourgeois law. Penalties for non-compliance range between €1,250 and €1.25 million.

In line with continental preferences, the register will only be open to people who can show the authorities that they have a 'legitimate interest' in seeing its contents. Journalists are not ruled out of the ranks of people who might prove that they have such an interest, but there appears to be no specific provision for the needs of compliance officers or money-laundering reporting officers. The database is known in Luxembourg as the registre de bénéficiaires effectifs or RBE. It will hold information on most entities registered in Luxembourg, especially those with the abbreviations of SA, SCA, Sàrl, SCS, SCSp, SE, SNC, GIE, SAS, SC and FCP and Luxembourg investment funds.

A separate Bill was issued in December to set up a register for trusts, to be kept by the tax-collecting authorities. Nobody except the Government is to be allowed to see this separate register.

In the meantime, on 31 January, the Government introduced a Bill to grant the Commission de surveillance du secteur financier or CSSF and the Commissariat aux assurances or CAA, Luxembourg's financial regulators, the right to authorise British financial institutions to continue to provide services to existing clients on a case-by-case basis during a 'grandfathering' period of 21 months after Brexit. Other such legislation is in the pipeline in other EU states.