Company and director
How to search a New Zealand company and its directors
The companies register is the cheapest reliable intelligence in New Zealand, and the most commonly skim read. Here is what each field is worth.
By Mike Gillam, Managing Director
Published · Reviewed
The New Zealand Companies Register is unusually open by international standards and is the natural first stop in almost any commercial enquiry. The problem is not access, it is attention. Most people read the top of the record, confirm the company exists, and stop before the fields that carry the information.
The company record, field by field
Status and incorporation date. Registered, in liquidation, in receivership, in administration, or removed. The incorporation date sets context: a company incorporated six weeks before the transaction you are examining is a different proposition from one trading since 2004.
Previous names. Recorded, and often the most revealing single field. A sequence of name changes may be ordinary rebranding or may be distance from a history. Run each previous name through your other searches, including any litigation history search, because decisions name the company as it was then.
Registered office and address for service. The registered office is where records are held, frequently an accountant's premises. The address for service is where documents can be served, and it is the one that governs whether service is effective. For process serving work, the distinction is the whole point, and it is developed further in verifying an address before service.
Directors. Names, appointment and cessation dates. Resignation timing is worth reading closely: a director who ceased shortly before a failure, or was appointed shortly before one, is a pattern worth understanding.
Shareholders and allocations. Who holds what, and in what proportion. This is where holding companies, trustee companies and nominee arrangements appear, and where the question of who actually benefits usually starts.
Annual return history. A dull field with real signal. Consistent on time filing suggests functioning administration. A gap, or a return filed only after a removal notice, suggests a company that stopped being managed for a while.
Filed documents. Particulars of appointments, constitutions, amalgamation documents, and in insolvency the liquidator's reports, which are the single most useful narrative document available about a failed company.
Director privacy, and what changed
Director address information on the register has been narrowed in response to concerns about the exposure of residential addresses. Directors are still required to provide address information, but the register is no longer a dependable route to a director's home address.
Practically, that shifts residential address work onto other sources and onto a clearer justification for needing it. Where an address is genuinely required, for service or enforcement, credit linked records are the usual path, subject to the consent and purpose rules described in reading a credit-linked address history. The register change is covered in more depth in director privacy changes and company searches.
Searching a director across entities
The high value move is the director search rather than the company search. One company tells you about one company. A director's full appointment history tells you about a pattern: entities incorporated and removed in sequence, related companies sharing an office, a cluster of failures, or a long stable record across a group.
Two cautions. Common names return appointments belonging to other people, so each match needs confirming against date of birth, address or association before it goes in a report. And a shareholder who is not a director may control the company entirely, so the appointment list is only half the structure.
What the register does not do
It holds no financial statements for ordinary private companies, so there is no revenue, profit or balance sheet position. It does not show trading names, bank accounts, employees or contracts. It does not show trust beneficiaries behind a trustee shareholder. And it is self reported: the register records what was filed, not what is true.
That is why company data is normally read against other sources rather than alone. The source detail sits on the Companies Office source page and the workflow on the company and director search page.
Corporate and compliance teams will find the wider process on the corporate and compliance page. Access is issued to verified professional users through the request access page.