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DIRECTOR'S REPORT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 NOVEMBER 2016
The director presents his report and the unaudited financial statements for the year ended 30 November 2016.
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The director who served during the year was:
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Chrinon Ltd is the publisher of OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world. We make this information in this database freely available to all, for the benefit of society, and with an innovative dual-use business model, which turns the traditional proprietary business model on its head.
Rather than a big black-box of data, where the provenance of the data is opaque to users, and users get to see a small slice of the data for a fee, all of the data in OpenCorporates is visible to users without charge, including the provenance (where it came from and when it was retrieved). We even make the underlying data freely available to public-benefit users, such as journalists, NGOs and academics, and also support and work with those groups, both in their use of the data, and towards the wider goal of corporate transparency, in the fight against corruption, and free and open access to official data about companies.
For users who don’t fall into that category, we provide the data on a paid-for basis, and this provides our sustainable business model, meaning not only that we are not dependent on fickle grant funding, but that we also have an internal engine of growth that allows us to have a greater public benefit impact each year. This year this approach began to pay dividends, as our commercial revenue increased by well over 100% year-on-year. This growth is powered by the increasing number of users of all types who have discovered the benefits of fully-provenanced primary data, and the increasing pervasiveness of OSINT (open source intelligence) in due-diligence and law-enforcement communities. This revenue growth has also allowed us to use our growing profits to build up reserves, while increasing investment in R&D and public-benefit work.
Among the highlights of this financial year:
·On the back of improvements to our data team and processes, we grew the OpenCorporates database to well over 100 million companies, with the addition of jurisdictions such as Israel, Moldova, Malaysia, Guernsey, Texas, Japan and Switzerland, as well as making countless improvements to existing jurisdictions.
·Launched OpenGazettes, with the help of an EU ODINE (Open Data in Europe) grant, to open up data from government gazettes. Government gazettes are a little-known but critical source of information about companies, particularly about critical events such as liquidation or merger. This project collected, standardised and aggregated gazettes from multiple countries, and connected them to the companies to which they relate.
·Played a significant role in the followup to the Panama Papers (see below)
·Started work on our part of the EU ChainReact project (Horizon 2020 grant), which aims to make supplier networks transparent, understandable, and responsive. We are focusing on both providing domain expertise for the other partners, and improving our innovative corporate structure functionality that we developed under a grant from the Alfred P Sloan Foundation
·Were successful in winning a second Horizon 2020 grant, euBusinessGraph, starting Jan 2017. For OpenCorporates’ part we will be focused on creating a new data product, Corporate Events Data, which will map and track changes to companies, providing critical signals and insight for due diligence, corporate investigations, and many other domains. More information: http://eubusinessgraph.eu/
·Formed a coalition with 6 NGOs (Transparency International, Global Witness, B-Team, ONE, World Wide Web Foundation, Open Contracting Partnership) to create a global open beneficial ownership register, with support from the UK’s Department for International Development. More information:
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DIRECTOR'S REPORT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 NOVEMBER 2016
https://openownership.org/
·Strengthened our sales/commercial team, and increased both clients and deal size across all areas, including signing up our first Tier 1 bank. This, together with the strength of our offering, helped grow our commercial revenue by well over 100% year-on-year. It is now over 85% of revenue, easily beating the target we set last year of at least 75%.
One of the defining events of 2016 was the release of the Panama Papers, and it’s true to say it was a transformational event for OpenCorporates. Not only did it raise awareness and importance of our public mission, it also directly impacted OpenCorporates (and vice versa).
Hundreds of thousands of searches were made on OpenCorporates around the world immediately after publication of the papers (visits to OpenCorporates.com from Argentina, for example, increased by 11,467% and in a 3-day-period 84,826 people searched for information on officers), and a Spanish minister resigned, in part as a result of information found in OpenCorporates.
We also worked with The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who oversaw the release of the papers, in a number of ways, both helping them link to companies from their website, and in providing support and domain expertise.
Last, but not least, the release has helped give momentum to the push for transparency of who controls and benefits from companies (‘Beneficial Ownership’), and the importance of high-quality statutory information on companies – both areas where OpenCorporates has been campaigning for many years. More on this, and other public impact made by OpenCorporates, is at https://blog.opencorporates.com/category/impact/
Despite these success, we recognize that there is much more to do to provide everybody (not just those with money and power) with the visibility and insight of the corporate world that is required for free and fair societies for survive and flourish. This means providing OpenCorporates with a firm base so that it can grow more quickly and be more effective.
In recognition of that, this year we started work on scoping out what our corporate structure should look like for the long term, one that will protect our public mission, provide confidence for our stakeholders (civil society, journalists, governments, commercial users), and allow growth to be accelerated to have ever more impact. This will be a significant undertaking, with considerable costs, but one that will have benefits in all areas, and further mark out the company as leaders in both the corporate data world, and in businesses run for the public benefit. The current progress on this important project can be seen at https://blog.opencorporates.com/category/impact/corporate-structure/
This report has been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies regime.
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This report was approved by the board and signed on its behalf.
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Christopher Taggart
Director
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CHRINON LIMITED
REGISTERED NUMBER: 07444723
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ABBREVIATED BALANCE SHEET
AS AT 30 NOVEMBER 2016
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CREDITORS: amounts falling due within one year
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TOTAL ASSETS LESS CURRENT LIABILITIES
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The director considers that the company is entitled to exemption from the requirement to have an audit under the provisions of section 477 of the Companies Act 2006 ("the Act") and members have not required the company to obtain an audit for the year in question in accordance with section 476 of the Act.
The director acknowledges his responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 with respect to accounting records and for preparing financial statements which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company as at 30 November 2016 and of its profit for the year in accordance with the requirements of sections 394 and 395 of the Act and which otherwise comply with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 relating to financial statements, so far as applicable to the company.
The abbreviated accounts, which have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions relating to companies subject to the small companies regime within Part 15 of the Companies Act 2006, were approved and authorised for issue by the board and were signed on its behalf by:
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Christopher Taggart
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NOTES TO THE ABBREVIATED ACCOUNTS
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 NOVEMBER 2016
2.TANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS
3.SHARE CAPITAL
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Allotted, called up and fully paid
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400 Ordinary shares of £1 each
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4.RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS
Included in other creditors is an amount of £14,000 (2015: £14,000) owed to the director, Christopher Taggart. This loan is unsecured, interest free and repayable on demand.
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