Last updated Oct 11, 2024 and written by Tom Richardson

Making a Corporate Appointment: Governing Law and Legal Form

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When forming a limited company it’s possible to have another company acting as any of the following: director, shareholder, person with significant control (PSC), and secretary. These are called ‘corporate appointments’. The information that you provide for a corporate appointment differs slightly from the information that you need to provide for a regular human appointment. Two terms that cause particular confusion when appointing a corporate director or corporate PSC are ‘Legal Form’ and ‘Governing Law’. In this post we’ll explain what these mean.

When appointing a corporate director or corporate PSC, we ask for the following information:

  • Company name
  • Authorising person’s name (the company director of the company being appointed)
  • Company’s registered office address
  • Was the company registered in the UK or is it non-UK?
  • Country registered
  • Registration number
  • And…

Governing Law

This is the law that the company being appointed operates under. For example, UK limited companies operate under the Companies Act 2006 whilst US companies may operate under the Delaware General Corporation Law. Strictly speaking, you should enter the full name of the law in the ‘Governing Law’ field, so in these cases ‘Companies Act 2006’ or ‘Delaware General Corporation Law’. However, in the past Companies House have been known to accept stripped down versions such as ‘UK law’ or ‘US law’.

Legal Form

This is simply the company structure that the company operates under. Common examples of this are; LTD, LLP, PLC and LLC.

Do you still have any questions about making a corporate appointment? Get in touch and a member of our team will be happy to help.