UK business secretary Vince Cable has announced a massive series of reforms that promise to make life very different in future for company directors.

UK business secretary Vince Cable has announced a massive series of reforms that promise to make life very different in future for company directors. He plans to set up a central registry of companies’ beneficial owners, a term he defines by reference to regulation 6.1 of the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations. In the case of a body corporate this means any individual who:

• as respects any body other than a company listed on a regulated market, ultimately owns or controls (whether through direct or indirect ownership or control, perhaps through bearer share holdings) more than 25 per cent of the shares or voting rights in the body; or 
• as respects any body corporate, otherwise exercises control over the management of the body. 

Cable’s document says that beneficial ownership should be interpreted “in the widest sense.” Fortunately for the tax-dodging and money-laundering fraternity that the proposal is designed to frustrate, he is only weakly in favour of making such a register available to the public and proposes no such register for the beneficial owners of trusts. The police and taxmen are, of course, to use it come what may. There are varying shades of strength in Cable’s proposals to keep an eye on nominee directorships. 

Cable also proposes to quash all bearer shares and turn them into ordinary registered shares. The document does not say whether the UK intends to force all its overseas territories to do the same, but this seems logical. The government is unambiguous in its desire to ban corporate directorships.