Beauhurst structures its data around what we call True Companies - real, operating businesses, rather than the legal entities that appear on registries. The distinction matters because a single business can span several legal entities, while a single corporate group can contain multiple genuinely separate businesses. Coutts, for example, is legally a subsidiary within NatWest Group, but operationally it's a distinct business with its own identity, customers, and brand - so we profile it separately, whereas a registry-only view would leave it hidden inside NatWest's structure.
This approach solves a real gap in how company data is normally built. Only around 10% of UK businesses operate through complex legal structures, yet those businesses employ roughly two-thirds of the UK workforce. For anyone researching or making decisions about them, data that's split across disconnected legal entities can mean double-counted financials, activity attributed to the wrong part of a group, or companies simply missed altogether. By consolidating financials, deals, patents, news, and other activity onto one profile per real business, we remove that risk.
Determining what counts as a single True Company follows a consistent test: is this an organisation with its own identity, operations, and agency? In more complex corporate groups, our data team draws these boundaries by cross-referencing company websites, trading locations, key people, press coverage, and official registries.
You're never locked into one level of detail. Alongside every True Company profile sits the underlying Legal Entity view, and you can move between the two depending on what you need - for example, checking filings exactly as submitted, confirming precisely who you'd be contracting with, or reviewing a specific subsidiary's financial position. Collections, saved searches, exports, and PDFs all work the same way across both views.
This structure currently covers UK, German & Irish companies in a single, consistent format, with further European coverage on the way.