Group structure is a critical part of understanding a company's holistic operations. Creditsafe uses parent-subsidiary and headquarters-branch relationships between business locations to build a risk assessment model that is informed by all of a company's operations, even if they are widespread and complex.
Privately held US companies are not required to disclose their exact corporate structure publicly or to any government registry.
Publicly traded US companies, on the other hand, must disclose their subsidiaries to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in regular reporting in the interest of transparency to investors.
Creditsafe sources this data from:
- Trusted third-party data suppliers specializing in group structure research.
- Government registries where insight is available.
- Creditsafe's global ownership database.
- Fresh investigations.
- Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.
A Safe Number designates a business at one particular location. So, a Safe Number may have an ownership relation to another Safe Number, or belong to a larger group structure.
Group structures consist of interrelated business locations; branch locations and their Headquarters, and/or Subsidiary companies and their Parent company.
Branches
One business may conduct operations at multiple locations, such as one company having many retail stores or business offices.
Usually, one location, called the Headquarters, is considered the main or central location and is often where executive functions take place.
The other locations reporting to the Headquarters are called branch locations.
Headquarters and branches share liabilities, so trade payment data and legal events “roll up” from all branch Safe Numbers to their Headquarters. So, the Headquarters Safe Number is always the most complete picture of the corporate family.
Subsidiaries
When a company has full or majority ownership of another company, it is a Parent company. The companies which it owns are its Subsidiary companies.
Parent companies do not necessarily share the liabilities of their subsidiaries. So, trade payment data and legal events do not “roll up” from subsidiary Safe Numbers to their Parent company.
How often is this information updated ?
Data is updated continuously as new or changing information is detected.
Coverage Statistics
7 million Headquarter companies that have at least a single branch location - covering 13 million branches.
Over 1 million group structures worldwide (over 80,000 group structures containing a US company).
Over 1.2 million companies in group structures containing a US company (over half a million US companies in our group structure database).