Valetime Group

The United Kingdom introduced Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) in 2001. LLPs are governed by the The Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000. Unlike LLP schemes adopted elsewhere, in the United Kingdom LLPs are specifically legislated as a Corporate body rather than a Partnership.

A Limited Liability Partnership shares many of the features of a normal partnership – but it also offers reduced personal responsibility for business debts. But, unlike members of ordinary partnerships, the LLP itself is responsible for any debts that it runs up, not the individual partners (Companies House, 2009).

Registration of a LLP can carry a number of benefits. A LLP effectively creates a new corporate body, which is a distinctly different business vehicle to the owners of the business.

Legal Responsibilities

Incorporation of a LLP carries some legal responsibilities. The details of Incorporation must be submitted to Companies House – the UK body responsible for the registry of company information. These details must be annually maintained. Audited financial accounts must be also be filed annually.

Companies Act

Limited Liability Partnerships must also adhere to provisions of the Companies Act.

Anti Money Laundering Guidance

Paul Jones — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:08:02 +0000

The Regulations

The Money Laundering Regulations 2003

The Money Laundering Regulations 2007

Guidance

Preventing money laundering and terrorist financing (MLR8) is a notice issued by HMRC in August 2008 that provides guidance on the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 (MLR 2007).

The Joint Money Laundering Steering Group (JMLSG) provides further guidance for the Financial Services Industry on good practice for countering money laundering and provides practical assistance in interpreting the UK Money Laundering Regulations. JMLSG Guidance on Money Laundering has been issued in 2006 & 2007 with further amendments introduced in December 2007 and further proposed in August 2009.

CCAB (the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies) has issued guidance on anti money laundering procedures with specific reference to their application in the Accountancy Sector for those providing audit, accountancy, tax advisory, insolvency or related services in the United Kingdom (including such firms providing trust or company services). ACCA highlight two sections of particular note that cover the “risk based approach” and “customer due diligence”. The key points are as follows.

Risk Based Approach

A risk based approach allows businesses to target resource and effort where the risk is greatest and, conversely, reduce requirements where the risk is low. Businesses must establish adequate and appropriate policies and procedures relating to risk assessment and management in order to prevent operations related to money laundering or terrorist financing.

Business must determine the extent of customer due diligence measures on a risk-sensitive basis depending on the type of client, business relationship, or services to be provided; and

be able to demonstrate to their anti-money laundering supervisory authorities that the extent of customer due diligence measures is appropriate in view of the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing.

Businesses are required to take a risk-based approach and have adequate measures to verify the identity of beneficial owners so that they are satisfied that they know who the beneficial owner is and what the control structure is in respect of a client who is other than a natural person.

Businesses are required to undertake scrutiny of transactions and other activities throughout the course of a business relationship to ensure consistency with businesses’ and individuals’ knowledge of the client, his business and risk profile.

Businesses must also keep up-to-date the information collected in applying customer due diligence measures.

Businesses must apply customer due diligence measures at appropriate times to existing clients on a risk-sensitive basis.

Customer due diligence

Effective “customer due diligence” measures are an essential part of any system designed to prevent money laundering and are a requirement of the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. The level of risk must be assessed before the appropriate level of customer due diligence can be applied.

The prospective customer may be an individual, or a corporate or legal entity. Due diligence measures need to be undertaken on the actual customer and all principal beneficial owners and controllers. The business also needs to maintain a level of confidence that the due diligence undertaken is relevant and up to date throughout the lifetime of the relationship.

Customer due diligence measures need to be carried out:

when establishing a business relationship,
when carrying out an occasional transaction,
where there is a suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing; and
where there are doubts concerning the veracity of previous identification information.

Businesses are required to ensure customer due diligence procedures are applied to all clients, both existing and new. Customer due diligence must be applied to existing clients (i.e. those existing prior to the 2007 Regulations coming into force) at appropriate times on a risk-sensitive basis.

Before entering a business relationship, businesses must:

identify and verify the client’s identity using documents or information from reliable and independent sources,
identify the beneficial owner of the client (where required), including understanding the ownership and control structure of the client and verifying, according to risk, the identity of the beneficial owner(s); and
obtain information on the purpose and intended nature of the business relationship.

Verification of identity may in certain circumstances be conducted during the establishment of a business relationship if this is necessary not to interrupt the normal course of business and there is little risk of moneylaundering or terrorist financing occurring, provided the verification is completed as soon as practicable after contact is first established.

During a business relationship, businesses must monitor activity on an ongoing basis. This includes scrutiny of transactions, source of funds and other elements of knowledge collected in the customer due diligence process, to ensure the new information is consistent with other knowledge of the client and keeping the documentation concerning the client and the relationship updated.

Businesses can use a variety of tools and methods to conduct customer due diligence; the onus is on them to satisfy themselves and to be able to demonstrate to their anti-money laundering supervisory authority the appropriateness of their approach.

Disclaimer: The information contained on this webpage is provided for general guidance only. It is not intended to provide you with professional advice nor is it intended to substitute you obtaining professional advice.

Companies House

Paul Jones — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:41:57 +0000

Companies House is the registrar of companies incorporated in England & Wales and Scotland. Company registration matters are dealt with in UK law by the Companies Act 1985 and the subsequent updated legislation contained in the Companies Act 1989. The Companies Act 2006 is changing the law for companies. These changes affect every company operating in the United Kingdom. Passed in 2006, the Act reaches the final stage of implementation on 1st October 2009.

Size of the Companies House Register

There are more than 2 million companies registered in Great Britain with over 300,000 new companies incorporated each year. The Companies House statistics are available online, for example 26,782 new companies were incorporated in August 2009.

Quality of Information

Companies House is an information registry, it therefore relies that the information provided to it is accurate. Companies House limited it’s responsibility on the accuracy of information provided by stating:

Companies House is a registry of corporate information. We carry out basic checks to make sure that documents have been fully completed and signed, but we do not have the statutory power or capability to verify the accuracy of the information that corporate entities send to us. We accept all information that such entities deliver to us in good faith and place it on the public record. The fact that the information has been placed on the public record should not be taken to indicate that Companies House has verified or validated it in any way. (Companies House, September, 2009)

The function of Companies House is to receive, store and disseminate information from limited companies and certain other bodies.

If that information is known to be inaccurate, Companies House should be informed. Further information on reporting incorrect details and fraud to companies house an be found on the Reporting Fraud pages of the Companies House website.

Copyright

Companies House website advised the following (Companies House, September, 2009).

Copyright is usually owned by the person or organisation that created the work. In the case of copyright works produced by civil servants, the copyright is owned by the Crown and qualifies for Crown copyright protection under section 163 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Government departments do not own copyright in their own right.

The material published by Companies House may be broadly split into two categories:

a) Material produced by Companies House
Material of this sort (e.g. guidance booklets) is subject to Crown copyright protection, and Companies House controls this copyright under a Delegation of Authority from the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO). Crown copyright also covers database rights, logos and visual images. Any Crown copyright protected material held by Companies House (other than the Royal Arms and departmental or agency logos) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. Where any of the Crown copyright items are being republished or copied to others, the source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged. If Crown copyright is infringed, Companies House is authorised by the Controller of HMSO to take such lawful steps as may be required to rectify the situation.

b) Material on the public register
With the exception of a small category of material which is exempt from statutory disclosure requirements, the Registrar is required by law to make the information comprised in documents sent to him available for public inspection. Information on the public register is made available by virtue of approvals issued by the Registrar in accordance with section 47 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and Schedule 1 of the Database Regulations (SI 1997/3032). Companies House imposes no rules or requirements on how the information on the public register is used.

The Companies House copyright policy.

Re-use of Company Information

Companies House (Companies House, September, 2009) also advise that as a public information provider, it makes all information relating to limited companies available for public inspection. It places no restriction on how the information is used after purchase other than the following:

Customers must take their own legal advice regarding possible breach of third party copyright.
Products sold in a bulk format or on CD/DVD-ROM may not be reproduced by the customer in the exact format in which it is presented.
Customers cannot reproduce the Crown insignia or use the Companies House logo.
If information is used from guidance notes, the website, publications or statistical tables the customer is required to credit Companies House as the source of the information.

Real Time Search Engines

Paul Jones — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:08:32 +0000

Twitter essentially offers real-time micro blogging where users can instantaneously update their followers. Facebook now also offers similar functionality with real-time status updates and news timelines for people to keep track of activity amongst their facebook social group.

With real-time becoming increasingly popular, then why are will still accepting search results for websites that have been indexed within the past year? If you create a new web site, post or comment it is not instantly accessible on the major search engines – despite many having the capability to index sites practically on demand. Will we ever get real time indexing and real-time searches?

I always use the Advanced Search Options on Google to select search results from the past day, week or month. This way I can see more recent and relevant results.

Google admit that they are “falling behind Twitter” and are potentially losing out to micro blogging sites that provide real time information. Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, has said that Google has been losing out to Twitter in the race to meet web user’s demand for real-time information (Guardian, 19th May 2009).

Twitter allows users to broadvast thei thoughts, actions and news instantaneously, while Google can take hours, days or even weeks to update content. “People really want to do stuff real time and I think they [Twitter] have done a great job about it,” Page said in a closing address at Google’s Zeitgeist conference in May 2009 . “I think we have done a relatively poor job of creating things that work on a per-second basis.” (Webpronews.com)

What is available to satisfy user demand for real-time search?

Google does offer “nearly real-time search”. But, it is still dependent on the search engine’s indexing routine. “Nearly real-time” search uses the QDR or Query Date Range trick. Altering the QDR in a search query will create a different result set based on a time period. Look out for “&tbs=qdr:” in the search query.

e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:n30,sbd:1&q=news&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB

Canging the “&tbs=qdr:” prefix will change the time period of the result set. Adding n30 will show results from the last 30 minutes. Change that number to change the period of results. s30 will return results from the last 30 seconds! So we can have near real-time searches from Google. See more on the QDR trick here: http://blog.omgili.com/?p=108

Soople (http://www.soople.com/) makes it easy for you to do custom searches on Google.

There are also a number of new search engines that attempt to tackle searching from a different angle. Some of these are looking at real-time search. or at least to answer the question “what is happening on the Internet right now”? The new search engines and real time information gateways tend to concentrate on Social content – blogs, tweets, photos and videos – which tends to be the frequently updated source of web content.

Collecta (http://collecta.com/) monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media.

IceRocket (http://www.icerocket.com) is pioneering commercial search by putting the interests and wants of consumers before advertisers. IceRocket has innovative blog search technology to search blogosphere (IceRocket, About, September 2009).

OneRiot (http://www.oneriot.com/) is a realtime search engine … “OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, then indexes the content on those pages in seconds. The end result is a search experience that allows users to find the freshest, most socially-relevant content from across the realtime web.” (OneRiot, About, September 2009)

Scoopler (http://www.scoopler.com/) is a real-time search engine. We aggregate and organize content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. We do this by constantly indexing live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more. When you search for a topic on Scoopler, we give you the most relevant results, updated in real-time. (Scoopler, About, September 2009)

SocialMention (http://socialmention.com/) is a social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. (SocialMention, About, September 2009).

Company Information on Websites

Paul Jones — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:38:43 +0000

A European Commission investigation has revealed that more than half of websites selling electronic goods ere breaking European laws aimed at protecting consumers [BBC, Websites "breaking consumer laws", September 2009].

Although I intend to look into that article further, it did get me thinking. In the United Kingdom, what is the basic level of information that a company is required to include on its website? This will help to serve as a useful reminder since the revised verrsion of the Companies Act comes into full effect in October 2009.

The Companies Act 1985 was revised in 2006 [Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) Companies Act 2006] with some of the changes coming into effect in 2007 with full implementation in October 2009. New requirements were specifically introduced for electronic documentation, including e-mail and websites.

From January 2007, Companies are required to include the following in electronic documentation:

company name;
company registration number; and
registered office.

The company name must end in an appropriate suffix – for example, “Ltd.” or “Limited”. If the name the business trades under is different in any way from the name of the company as shown on its certificate of incorporation, then the full name, including “Limited” etc. must also be shown.

The registered office must be identifed as the registered office. The important part to displaying the address of a business is that the registered office must be clearly identified and differentiated against any other trading addresses.

The area of registration must also be identified – for example, in “England & Wales” or “Scotland”.

In general it is good practice for all businesses (sole trader, partnerships, etc.) to provide contact details on any website they operate. Partnerships and Limited partnerships should also give the details of partners – noting that this information is also available from public registries.

It is also good practice for a web site to clearly display the name of the company that will be performing any business transactions and to show any appropriate registrations – including VAT registration even if the website or business does not perform online sales.

Further information & publications about the Companies Act 2006 can be found on the Companies House website [Companies Act Publications, Companies House, September 2009].

legal | disclaimer

Paul Jones — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:42:40 +0000

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Should you object to any of the content of this blog, please use the contact sheet to contact Valetime Group and we will look into this.

Protected: Fiduciary Service Providers in the UK

Paul Jones — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:25:46 +0000