Checking company details. Director has 2500+ companies listed?

forgotmyname

Looking to do some business with a company and as usual turn to companies house to see if everything is above board.

I can see a Director registered and resigned the same day adding 2 other Directors and the company name changed some months later.
What puzzled me was the Director that resigned has over 2500 companies listed. 

A fair few were dissolved and some had accounts overdue and strikeoff notices but why was the Director listed with many company names?

Is this just someone that helps people startup companies?   Wide range of companies from net sales, staff training, software development
to small industrial factory businesses.

Resigned many but still a Director on quite a few.  Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks.

HappyHarry

forgotmyname said:

Looking to do some business with a company and as usual turn to companies house to see if everything is above board.

I can see a Director registered and resigned the same day adding 2 other Directors and the company name changed some months later.
What puzzled me was the Director that resigned has over 2500 companies listed. 

A fair few were dissolved and some had accounts overdue and strikeoff notices but why was the Director listed with many company names?

Is this just someone that helps people startup companies?   Wide range of companies from net sales, staff training, software development
to small industrial factory businesses.

Resigned many but still a Director on quite a few.  Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks.

Could be an accountant that has set up many ready-made "off the shelf" companies to sell to clients who can then avoid going through a lengthy process of incorporating a private business.

Neil_Jones

It usuaally common practice for the accountant or somebody else to set these things up.  When its all ready and set up they'll set up somebody else as the director, and then "resign".

There is such a concept as  a "shadow director", though I don't think Companies House documents these, as they are not "appointed" as such.  A shadow director may continue to pull the strings of the company as it were, but isn't "on the record".  Doesn't change their accountablity/liability if things go south though.

PHK

Remember a director or senior manager doesn't have to be a "natural person" (the term used in business for a real human) the function can be carried out on a professional basis as a service by a company as long as it is considered a separate entity to the people working in it .

You often see this with very new companies or where a sole executive director is suddenly incapacitated. The shareholders which are probably not natural persons in many cases (eg investment/pension firm) would temporarily assume the function in order to appoint new directors(s)

DullGreyGuy

Neil_Jones said:

There is such a concept as  a "shadow director", though I don't think Companies House documents these, as they are not "appointed" as such.  A shadow director may continue to pull the strings of the company as it were, but isn't "on the record".  Doesn't change their accountablity/liability if things go south though.

Companies House only lists statutory directors, a company could have a hundred "Directors" and "CxO" employees but only 3-5 statutory directors listed. 

A shadow director is just a person/entity that is not formally a board member but the board generally follow their direction. It's fairly common in Group structures on both an upward and downward approach and the "shadow" isn't as nefarious as the title sounds. 

forgotmyname said:

I can see a Director registered and resigned the same day adding 2 other Directors and the company name changed some months later.
What puzzled me was the Director that resigned has over 2500 companies listed.  

The key question is when this is relative to the companies founding? 

Having done some M&A work in the past in each case we used a company formations firm to create "NewHoldCo" or used the project's codename to create what will be the ultimate parent once the deal goes through. So the market doesn't know what's going on the company formation firm are listed as the director. 

There is often a lot of backwards and forwards on what the new parent company is going to be called so its frequent it changes its name several times. Its a very emotive decision and the Board spend a disproportionate amount of time considering it and often reopen the discussion several times.