The legislation governing the registration of a UK branch or place of business by an overseas company has recently changed, bringing together what were parallel regimes under the old legislation.
A UK establishment is either a branch or a place of business set up by an overseas company in the UK. These terms are not defined, although in most cases there would be little practical difficulty in recognising from the extent of the overseas company's presence and activities that it had either a branch or a place of business here. The main difficulty used to be in deciding which of the two it was, as the registration requirements were different. Now it does not matter: under the Overseas Companies Regulations 2009 the same requirements apply to both.
Overseas companies that had an unregistered branch or place of business in the UK immediately before 1 October 2009 are deemed to have opened a UK establishment on 1 October 2009 for the purposes of the new regime. They must deliver a transitional return to Companies House not later than 31 March 2010.
For an article briefly outlining the principal aspects of the new regime, click here .
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
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The original publication date for this article was 30/03/2010.
