Who Owns a Company in the UK? Reading the PSC Register

To find out who owns a UK company, check its People with Significant Control (PSC) register on Companies House. A PSC — sometimes called a beneficial owner — is an individual or entity that owns or controls the company, and the public record names them, free. Crucially, ownership is not the same as management: directors run a company, while PSCs own or control it. The two often overlap, but reading them together is how you understand who is really behind a business.

What a PSC is

A person with significant control meets one or more conditions known as the "nature of control". The main ones are holding, directly or indirectly:

• More than 25% of the shares, or
• More than 25% of the voting rights, or
• The right to appoint or remove a majority of the board, or
• Otherwise exercising significant influence or control over the company.

A company can have one PSC, several, or — in some structures — a corporate "relevant legal entity" as its PSC, which you then trace upward.

How to find it

Search the company on the Companies House register and open the "People" tab. Alongside directors you will see the People with Significant Control section, listing each PSC, the nature of their control (which threshold they meet), and the date they became registrable. It is public and free, with no sign-in required.

For each PSC you typically see their name, partial date of birth, nationality, country of residence and the control conditions they meet — similar to the director record covered in our company director search guide.

How current the data is

Companies must keep their PSC information up to date: they update their own register within 14 days of a change and file it with Companies House within a further 14 days, so the public record should reflect changes within about 28 days. Bear that lag in mind when ownership has recently shifted.

The identity-verification reform

Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, identity verification for directors and PSCs became mandatory, rolling out from late 2025. This is a significant improvement: the people named as owners are increasingly verified rather than self-asserted, which strengthens the register for due diligence, KYC and anti-money-laundering checks.

What ownership data is good for

• Due diligence and KYC — confirming who you are really dealing with before contracting or onboarding.
• Group mapping — tracing corporate PSCs upward to find ultimate beneficial owners and parent companies.
• Investment signals — a new individual crossing the 25% threshold often marks an equity investment, a useful signal covered in high-growth companies.
• Risk and conflict checks — spotting shared ownership across related companies.

The limits

The PSC register is powerful but not complete. It captures control at the 25%-plus thresholds, so smaller shareholders are not listed there (though the company's filed confirmation statement and any share filings give more detail). Complex offshore or layered structures can still obscure ultimate ownership, which is one reason the identity-verification reforms matter. For anything high-stakes, read the PSC register alongside the filing history rather than relying on it alone — see how to read filing history.