Companies: How private are shareholders’ details?
“Privacy, like other rights, is not absolute. As a person moves into communal relations and activities such as business and social interaction, the scope of personal space shrinks” (Extract from judgment below) All companies - big and small, public and private – must keep registers of their shareholders and directors. And, as the SCA (Supreme Court of Appeal) made clear recently, even “private” companies’ registers aren’t private at all. An investigative journalist digs for detail A financial journalist, investigating a controversial investment scheme, was tasked with investigating the shareholding structures of three companies. The companies refused him access to their…