German Trade Register

This article refers mainly to the Commercial Register in Germany. The commercial registers in Switzerland and the Netherlands have the same name.

The Commercial Register (German: Handelsregister) in Germany is a public register that contains details of all tradespeople and legal entities in the district of the registrar (generally the Amtsgericht (local district court) of the place where the Landgericht (superior court)) is also situated.

The Trade Register in Germany contains two branches: Branch A deals with partnerships, sole traders and registered associations (Vereine) without share capital. Branch B contains all incorporated companies with share capital. Applications (for new entries, changes and liquidations) must be made in notarized form in the presence of a public notary.

Amongst other things the Trade Register contains information on:

• legal name of a company
• Registered office
• people representing the company (Managing Director, Board of Directors, holders of Proxy)
• subscribed capital if any.

The functions of the Trade Register with respect to the information submitted are publication, examination, control and safekeeping. The content may be taken as accurate by any party referring to the register.

The entries to the Trade Register are made by a judge or an authorised employee. In many of the 16 Federal States, the Register is kept electronically.

Anybody may request an extract from the Trade Register about a specific company, the so-called Handelsregisterauszug (also HR-Auszug). Information about registered companies can be downloaded online, but may require prior registration.^[1] A simple extract is usually priced at 8,00 €, a notarized one about 15,00 € (as of August 2005).

Legal entities are mostly obliged to publish their Annual Report by sending it to the Trade Register. This obligation doesn't depend (since 2009) on the size of the company.

Entries to the Trade Register are sent to the Bundesanzeiger (Federal gazette of the government) and published by them. Newspapers sometimes also publish new entries, although since 2009, entries to newspapers are no longer mandatory. Also, all registered companies are required to submit their annual accounts to the Bundesanzeiger for publication.^[2]

See also

• Companies Registration Office (disambiguation)
• Companies House, the comparable office for England and Wales
• Secretary of State (U.S. state), the comparable office in the United States of America^[3]
• List of company registers

External links

1. Handelsregister.de Official Information Portal of the German Trade Register (Multi-Language)
2. eBundesanzeiger.de Official Information Portal of the German Bundesanzeiger (German language)
3. There are extremely few examples of federally registered business entities. In the United States, most business entity registration takes place at the state level through a chartering process. In many states, this is handled by an officer called the Secretary of State, not to be confused with the United States Secretary of State, the U.S. equivalent of "Foreign Minister." However, in some states, the registration of business entities is handled by a commission, or other government office. An example of this is the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Commercial-register.com Detailed information about the Handelsregister (English)