The Danish Business Authority [Erhvervsstyrelsen]

History of the Danish Business Register

The Danish Business Authority was established on 1 January 2012.

The Danish Business Authority has approximately 700 employees. The Danish Business Authority’s tasks were previously performed by the Commerce and Companies Agency [Erhvervs- og Selvskabsstyrelsen], the Enterprise and Construction Authority [Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsen], and the IT and Telecom Agency [IT- og Telestyrelsen].

The Danish Business Authority is part of the Danish Ministry of Business and Growth [Erhvervs- og Vækstministeriet].

What does the Danish Business Register offer?

On erhvervsstyrelsen.dk, you can find information on all the Authority’s areas of work, including the Danish Business Register CVR.dk.

CVR.dk is the centralised entry point for information and data on all businesses in Denmark. Regardless of the type of business, you can find information on both the business itself (also known as the legal entity) and its production units.

For certain types of business – in particular public limited-liability companies and private limited-liability companies – you can find more information: Accounts, facts and reports on the business and the people who manage it.

Denmark is also a member of the European Business Register (EBR). Non-Danish speakers can go to the European Business Register (EBR) to search for information on Danish businesses in their own language. The EBR contains information on nearly all countries in Europe.

Is it free of charge to access the Danish Business Register?

It is free of charge to obtain basic information, company reports, full reports, and Central Business Register records [CVR-udskrifter]. You can also buy other company information, such as accounts. The following products are available free of charge to everyone:

Central Business Register records

Information on the private address of a fully liable stockholder, when this address is not the same as the address of the business, is disclosed upon request.

Places of business

‘Places of business’ gives an overview of associated production units with information on the production units’:

Name, address and commune in which the registered office is located
Type of business
Sector in which it operates
Number of employees

Company report

The company report contains:

The Central Business Register number (or Registration number for Greenlandic companies)
The company’s name, address, and commune in which its registered office is located
Subsidiary names
Information on stock-market listing
Signing authority
Status
Persons involved (founders, management, board) - without addresses
Accounting period
Date of last published accounts

Full report

The full report contains everything from the company report, plus:

Statement of purpose
Persons involved (founders, management, board) with addresses
Auditing
Share capital
Date of incorporation
Date of last three published accounts
Accounting year
Historical information

Short list of persons

The paging functionality shows a person’s company affiliations

Expanded list of persons

The expanded paging functionality also shows information on the full list of persons involved in a company.

Data Bank

The Data Bank can provide structured data on the basis of specified criteria.

Information to be used can be ordered through the Data Bank, regardless of whether it is information on a single company or a person’s affiliation to companies, or a list of businesses within a geographical area or a certain industry. You can even produce an extract or a list with your own criteria by visiting the Data Bank. It’s simple and does not take long.

Bulk extracts

Bulk extracts are offered by the Central Business Register. They provide easy access to a Central Business Register extract, where you can get Central Business Register data from a list of Central-Business-Register numbers or Production-unit numbers. It is also possible to produce single extracts.

How reliable are the documents in the register?

Section 14 of the Companies Act transposes Article 3 of the First Company Law Directive into Danish company law, and describes how the records can be relied upon. Section 14 of the Companies Act states:

‘It is considered that information published on the Danish Business Authority’s IT system has come to the knowledge of third parties. Point 1. However this does not apply to transactions carried out within 16 days of being made public, provided it is shown that a third party could not have had knowledge of the circumstances that were made public.

As long as they have not been published on the Danish Business Authority’s IT system, the circumstances that are to be registered and made public cannot be enforced against third parties, unless it is shown that the third parties had knowledge of them. The fact that circumstances of this kind have not yet been made public does not prevent a third party from proceeding on the basis of them.’

Responsibility for the accuracy of the records

The notifier is responsible for the accuracy of the reported information, see Section 8 of the Notification Order [anmeldelsesbekendtgørelsen], and Section 15(2) of the Companies Act. The notifier may be criminally liable if the notification was not lawfully made, or if the reported information is incorrect.

The Danish Business Authority does not verify the accuracy of the reported information, but records the information that is reported to it. This is the case regardless of whether what is at issue is a manual registration or a self-registration conducted on virk.dk.

The Danish Business Authority may be liable for damages for use of reported information or documents that are incorrect due to a management factor, such as a processing error.

Business registers in EU countries