PSC Legislation is issued at the eleventh hour

As reported in our recent article, the Information about People with Significant Control (Amendment) Regulations 2017 (the "PSC Regulations") have now been published and as expected, take effect from 26 June 2017.

The legislation as anticipated amends and extends the PSC Regulations so that:

• The only UK companies not required to comply with the PSC Register Regime are those with voting shares admitted to trading on: -
  • a regulated market in an EEA state; and
  • specified markets in Switzerland, the USA, Japan and Israel.
• Companies with shares admitted to trading on AIM are no longer automatically exempt.
• Scottish limited partnerships and Scottish general partnerships (which only have corporate bodies as members) are no longer automatically exempt.
• Entities that are now caught within the legislation have until 24 July to create PSC Registers and a further 14 days after that to send PSC details to Companies House.
• From now on:
  • any changes to PSC details for any entity caught by the PSC Regime must be updated in the PSC Registers within 14 days of the information being received (and where relating to individuals, confirmed); and
  • Companies House must be notified of the change on forms PSC01 to PSC09 within a further 14 days.
• Companies House has also been given new powers to release PSC information which is "protected information" not listed on the public register to credit institutions or financial institutions (on the grounds that they carry out customer due diligence).

Useful government guidance can be found here.