BANK ACCOUNT OF A COMPANY WHICH IS OWNED BY FOREIGN COMPANY

The topic I choose for this article is one spiny question - a small one, but which costs a lot of time and needles. If this information is helpful, I will be happy.

The procedure is opening a bank account of a company when:

• The owner of the Bulgarian company is another company, which is a foreign legal entity or entities.

What Happens Usually?

The company is registered and filed in the Bulgarian Trade Register. The manager of the company goes to a favorable bank and tries to open a bank account for the company. And the answer is “NO”. This happens because the bank policy is to obtain information about the owner - an individual person who owns the whole company with all of its subsidiaries, including the subsidiaries in Bulgaria.

Usually, these documents ought to be presented before the Bulgarian authorities who give permission for the registration of Bulgarian companies. They have electronic copies on the website of the Bulgarian Trade Register. The electronic file of the Bulgarian companies (not only the general statute) may be opened by remote access or with an electronic signature. In the majority of cases, the bank officers do not have such remote access or electronic signature. This is the reason why they can’t access this data and they demand it from the customers.

What Can You Do in This Situation?

You may go to the Registry Agency and ask for extracts of certified copies of the electronic file. You do not need everything. Just:

• Written statements for the decisions of the owners to start a company in Bulgaria and these decisions are taken by the right people.
• The translated and legalized copies of extracts from the foreign trade register, where the legal entity - the owner of the Bulgarian company - is registered. From this extract, the bank officers may get information about who is the owner - the physical person who manages the foreign company, who may take decisions and represent it, and who may grant rights to the Bulgarian manager. In short, it is a document that tells on what basis and by whom the Bulgarian manager has his rights.

This trip to the Registry Agency may save you a lot of time, research at the last moment for another bank, which may not have such demands without this complication, and the deception that in order to have a bank account here, you will have to issue, legalize, and translate again all documents needed for the registration of a company.

If the electronic file of the company in the Bulgarian Trade Register is a bit older, this is not a problem. All changes that happen in the foreign company-owner must be reflected in the Bulgarian Trade Register as well when they are main obstacles. This obligation belongs to the owners (partners) and the manager of the Bulgarian company, so that the information in the electronic file is accurate and correct.

I hope that you will find the above-mentioned information useful.