What is a company?
A company is more than a legal entity; it's a real, operating organisation with employees, a leadership team, offices, customers, a brand, and the agency to make its own decisions.
That distinction matters, because a single company can span multiple legal entities, and a single corporate group can contain several genuinely separate companies. Defining a company by its registry filings alone misses what the business actually is.
This is what True Companies captures: the real business, not the paperwork.
What is a True Company?
True Companies is Beauhurst's way of representing real-world businesses; consolidating data from across legal entities, official registers, IP and innovation databases, public funding databases, news sources, company websites and more into one coherent, comprehensive profile.
A True Company is defined as an active, operating business: an organisation with its own identity, operations, and agency. Not a holding company with no employees, not a dormant shell, not a pension trustee. The common-sense test is straightforward; does this organisation have its own people, its own operations, its own brand? If yes, it's a True Company. This definition determines what gets consolidated and what gets separated.
One corporate structure can also contain multiple True Companies. NatWest and Coutts, for example, sit inside the same group but are distinct businesses that we profile separately.
True Companies is built to operate consistently across borders, bringing UK and German companies together in a single format, with further European expansion underway.
Why True Companies?
Most company data is built on legal entities; the registrations that appear on official registries. But a business, as you'd recognise it, can be made up of one legal entity, or dozens, or hundreds. And the information that tells you what a company actually does (its financials, its people, its news coverage, its IP) is scattered across sources that have no connection to each other.
Only around 10% of UK businesses operate through complex legal structures, yet they employ roughly two-thirds of the workforce. For anyone researching or making decisions about those businesses, the gap between what data platforms show and what's actually there isn't a minor inconvenience. It affects every piece of analysis built on top of it. The decisions built on this data - who to back, which clients to pursue, how to report economic impact - are only ever as good as the picture underneath. True Companies changes that.
A few examples of what this means in practice:
The Hut Group - a huge organisation with 90+ legal entities in their structure, many of which are their own True Companies. True Companies surfaces each real business within that structure separately.
Mercedes-Benz - a globally recognised brand with many different arms operating internationally, some independently. True Companies reflects how those businesses actually operate, not just how they're registered.
Coutts - a widely recognised name in private banking. But legally, it isn't an independent company - it sits as a subsidiary within NatWest Group, alongside hundreds of other legal entities. True Companies makes Coutts easily discoverable as a distinct business, rather than hidden inside NatWest's structure.
What’s better with True Companies?
You get one complete picture of each business, instead of data scattered across multiple legal entities. In practice, that means:
Consolidated financials. Financials are consolidated to a single accurate figure per business, so you’re not double-counting when a company files across subsidiaries.
A fuller view of every company’s activity. Deals, fundraisings and grants appear on the operating business that actually took part; patents roll up to the group, where IP ownership typically sits. Each piece of activity has a single home, so nothing is missed during your research.
Smarter company status. True Companies reflect how a business actually operates, not the registry status of any single legal entity within it. This means a dormant subsidiary doesn’t pull an active business down, and a leftover holding entity doesn’t keep a wound-up one alive.
Consistency across borders. UK and German companies live in the same format, so you can search, compare and collect them together - with more countries coming soon.
Each of these helps on its own, but it's bringing them together into a single view that stops you missing data and search results.
How do you determine what makes up a True Company?
Every True Company has to pass one test: is this an active organisation with its own identity, operations, and agency? If yes, it's a True Company in its own right; if no (e.g. a holding company, dormant shell or pension trustee), it isn't.
In most cases, one corporate structure maps cleanly to one True Company. For more complex groups, our Data team draw the boundaries by cross-referencing websites, trading locations, key people, press coverage, official registries and more - which is how, for example, Coutts emerges as a distinct True Company within the wider NatWest Group.
This isn't a one-off exercise. Any company involved in a new deal or ownership change is reviewed on an ongoing basis, so as the real world changes, the data keeps up.
How does our approach compare to other company data providers?
Company data platforms fall into one of two camps.
Registry-based platforms are built on legal entities. They’re deep and structured, but a legal entity isn’t always a company. Users researching a complex business have to navigate multiple entities manually, with no single consolidated view of the real business.
Brand and web based platforms avoid the problem by working at brand level. These platforms can then sacrifice depth and the data is often surface level or unverified.
True Companies takes the best of both: the depth and verification of registry data, and the consolidated view of a real business, in one profile.
How will this benefit me?
If you're using fragmented data to make decisions, the decisions are only as good as the data.
Beyond having one coherent, comprehensive company story for every company, there are many benefits for platform users:
Find and research the right companies, faster
You're trying to find information about a business, not decode its corporate structure. True Companies do that work for you. It’s a single source of truth for all company info.
Company intelligence you can rely on
Stop missing companies where data lives across different entities. With one complete company profile to refer to, you can trust the information you’re working with is accurate, up to date, and complete - with no cross-referencing. Get the real picture of markets and sectors.
True Companies consolidates financials across a company's legal entities, eliminating double-counting and giving a single, accurate financial picture per real-world business. This means cleaner search results, more accurate regional and sector views, and fewer companies missed because their financials were split across subsidiaries
See what others miss
Beauhurst is the only platform with this level of legal entity consolidation and company profiling. We’re setting a new industry standard for accuracy and completeness.
Analyse accurately, without the noise
Toggle between True Company and Legal Entity views, and stop missing companies where data lives across different entities. Dig into financial nitty gritty and detail when you want to, not out of necessity.
What if I need to see an entity’s filings as-filed?
You can move between the True Company and the underlying legal entities at any time. Both views sit alongside each other on the platform, and you pick whichever fits the question you're asking.
You’ll want a legal entity view when:
Looking at filings as submitted - accounts, confirmation statements, charges and other Companies House documents as they were filed.
Confirming exactly who you're contracting with - for procurement, credit, legal or KYC workflows, the registered entity is the unit that matters.
Analysing financial distress or a specific subsidiary's position - entity-level filings contain detail that a consolidated view deliberately smooths over.
Every legal entity links back to its True Company, and every True Company surfaces its underlying entities. You can toggle between them from search results or any company page:
What’s changing for me?
Over the coming months, your Beauhurst account will migrate to True Companies as the default experience. We'll handle the migration for you, there's nothing you need to do.
Once you're moved across, you'll see a more complete view of every business in one place, bringing together data from across legal entities, official registers, news sources and more. Everything you already rely on - collections, saved searches, PDFs, exports - comes with you, and you can still toggle to the Legal Entity view whenever you need to.
We’ll be in touch when your account is ready to move. If you'd like to migrate sooner, just let your account manager know and we'll add you to the early migration list.
Is any platform and API functionality changing?
No — everything you rely on today is still there. Collections, saved searches, PDFs and all other features remain available across True Company profiles.
The one addition is on the API side. We have built a new version of the API that lets you choose the level of detail you want. This has all of the same data available in the legacy API and more — including consolidated company profiles, full financial history, fundraisings, grants, corporate structure and shareholders.
Your existing API access will continue to work as-is, and we'll be in touch with migration details closer to the time.
What about international data? Is this using True Companies too?
Yes, our German data is already in the True Company format, sitting alongside our UK data. This means you search, compare, and collect UK and German companies in the same collection and searches. Further European expansion is on the way.
👋 Get in touch with the team
For any more information on the above, or if you have any questions, please speak to your Support team - their contact details will be found in the Help tab on your account.