Registering a Company in Great Britain

Registering a company in Great Britain requires choosing its legal form. So, let's take a quick look at what it takes to apply for registration of an LTD in Great Britain. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll divide the whole process into six stages.

Stage 1 - Documents

Registering an LTD in Great Britain requires submitting the following documents:

• MOA; 
• Charter.

There’s also instructions on how the company & its directors should make decisions on various matters related to shares, meetings, directors' powers, etc. These instructions form the basis of the company’s operation and should, therefore, be written clearly & competently.

Stage 2 - Name

Choosing a name for a company requires its founders to meet the following criteria:

• The name must be different from other companies’ names; it mustn’t bear a direct similarity to other names/TMs or have the potential of misleading people;
• The name shouldn’t contain any rude or obscene words; it shouldn’t contain any racist connotations or denote government agencies’ patronage;
• The name mustn’t contain any non-alphabetic characters or punctuation marks;
• Registering a company in England requires its name to end with “Limited” or “Ltd”.

Stage 3 - Office

A company is required to have a physical office in Great Britain. Choosing one should be taken very seriously, since that’s where all the official mail, including notifications from government agencies, will be forwarded to. Also, the address will be publicly available & included in company letterheads, as well as website and email signatures.

Stage 4 - Personnel

Establishing a company in Great Britain requires hiring at least one director. To ensure the smooth running of the company, it’s advisable to hire at least 2 directors. If one of them decides to resign, the company can continue to operate.

Please note that the director doesn’t need to be a UK resident; however, their address of residence must be registered in the registration chamber. Directors also have the option of specifying a business address to avoid having their home address listed in public registries.

Appointing a secretary is optional unless it’s required by the company's charter. The secretary can be either physical or legal.

Stage 5 - Shares

Registration of a company in Great Britain requires taking care of one more document, which will contain information about the structure & value of shares. Since shares can be divided into classes & differ in the rights they guarantee, they should all be described in detail.

Stage 6 - Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a natural (or legal) person who meets certain criteria (e.g. one holding a large number of shares or having the right to appoint or remove directors from office or directly control a company). Having such persons helps increase trust & transparency toward the actual owner of the company. 

Conclusion

Naturally, registering a business in Great Britain involves more than 6 steps. It will also be necessary to open a corporate bank account, and, possibly, obtain a license if the company's activities require licensing. That said, we still hope our short guide will help you get a better idea of what the registration process is all about.