Are you looking for information about the owners or the directors and officers of an Ontario company? Do you need an official address of the head office of a company and the name of the President?

The name of the document the Ontario government will give you is called an Ontario Corporate Profile Report. You can also order the same report under the name of corporate search or a company search.

You will not be able to determine information about an Ontario sole proprietorship or Ontario partnership from this type of report. If you wish to find out information about a partnership or a sole proprietorship you need to obtain an Ontario Business Name Search.

You can find out the registered office address of an Ontario company together with the names of the officers and directors and their addresses, plus their titles, and a list of all documents filed with the Ontario government for that company. These documents would include notices of change, annual returns, articles of amendment for some.

A corporate search is a provincial service and each province and territory has is own corporate search for the companies registered in that province or territory.

In Ontario you cannot obtain the name of an owner of an Ontario company. It is considered private information. However, determining who the directors are of the company in many cases leads you to the owners because frequently the owner will be a director. For larger Ontario companies and any public Ontario company this might not be the case.

The Corporate Profile Report will tell you if there are any business names registered against the company but it will not give you those names. A “yes” or “no” is inserted into the box on the Corporate Profile Report and if “yes” is inserted then you can do a further Business Names Report for that company to determine what business names it carries on business under.

If the actual company name has been different in the past you will be able to find out all the names that the company has ever had.

Every province calls these searches different names and it is better to know in advance so you are not wasting your money on the wrong search. Further if the shopping cart is efficient it will provide a comment box where you can clarify why you ordered the product. You will need to know the proper name of the company. If you do not know this you can as well write the contact person and tell them you are not sure and they can do a quick check for you to see what names are on file, prior to your spending your money.

Resources for Canadian Business Owners can provide you about further information on Ontario Corporate Searches and Ontario Company Searches

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Filed under: Small Business

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