Dealing with a company registered as a foreign company (FC) at companies house

[zorba11]

Our IT consultancy has just been offered its first contract. We will be providing services in the UK for an Indian company.

The question arises then, which party to name in our contracts?

The Indian company claims not to have any fully registered UK company (i.e. company number consisting just of numbers without a 2-letter prefix) for us to contract with. Instead they have offered us a contract with a name where the party is named as such (names and addresses amended for anonymity):

"The Client: A & B Infotech Limited, a company registered in India, whose registered office is at A&B House, <address1>, Mumbai, India and whose UK branch office is at 1 High Street, Canary Wharf, London, <postcode>."

I looked up A & B Infotech Limited on companies house website, and found the following similar entries (registration numbers amended for anonymity):

<number> <status> <name> <action>
BR003146 C A & B Limited Company removed
FC018837 C A & B Limited Company removed
FC028244 A & B Limited
BR009893 A & B
BR003983 A AND B Infotech Limited
FC020384 A AND B Infotech Limited
FC029144 A & B Infotech LLC
BR010583 A & B Infotech LLC

A few interesting points:

(1)
There is no exact match for "A & B Infotech Limited". Could we be in danger of signing a contract with a company that could later (i.e. during debt recovery) be considered not to exist ?


(2)
There are duplicate names, which I thought was not allowed. However, clicking on each of the first 2x duplicate lines both lead to the same company details page, the one for FC018837 (the pages are identical, right down to having the same URL in the top of the browser). Could it be that there are 2x registrations (one under FC designation and one under BR designations) for the same company.

The same thing happens for the next set of duplicates, "A AND B Infotech Limited" (which both map to an FC company registered in Mumbai, India), and for the last set: "A & B Infotech LLC" (which both map to an FC company registered in Mumbai, India).

Interestingly the 2x listings that are NOT duplicates both map to the same underlying FC company too!

Is this usual, and is this ok?


(3)
The closest match seems to be "A AND B Infotech Limited"

I was thinking of getting the contract amended to:

"The Client: A & B Infotech Limited, a company registered in India, whose registered office is at A&B House, <address1>, Mumbai, India (and which is registered in the UK under company number FC020384) and whose UK branch office is at 1 High Street, Canary Wharf, London, <postcode>. (and which is registered in the UK under company number (BR003983)."

..so as to leave no doubt as to which company we were dealing with.

How does this sound?

[VeryMark]

A contract with an Indian company is perfectly valid at law regardless of whether you quote its equivalent Foreign Company registration details at Companies House.

However, what does matter is where the contract is to be performed and under what law and jurisdiction - presumably it is to be performed in the UK under English law and jurisdition?

.... and if everything goes pearshaped does the Indian company have assets in the UK to sue against?

[Punched]

I would be so blunt as to ask for proof of their incorporation, or even last years companies accounts.

You could end up spending thousands on a company that don't exist, so its VERY important that you get all the fact now before you do any work.

Good Luck

Gerry

[seanstevens]

If you wish drop me a note and I'll take a look at the co. structure and see what credit history they have.

[zorba11]

We credit-checked them and their rating had gone from some several hundred million £ a year or two ago, to NIL !!
Also they had a CCJ registered against them from November 2009.

We decided to put a "pay when paid" clause into our contract with our subcontractor.

As it happens, the Indian company paid up in full, albeit a few weeks outside of terms. I had a "sponsor" on the inside, someone who personally knew our subcontractor, and didn't want to see them getting shafted, and who was therefore motivated to get us paid so we could pay our subcontractor. He pulled a few strings for us.