Faire Sans Dire recently submitted a Freedom of Information Request to Companies House. The watered down results we got were staggering but not completely unexpected.

At 31st March 2015 there were 319 directors of live companies aged over 100 according to Companies House and the oldest was … wait for it … 945 years old. This is surely something for the Guinness Book of Records.

Well, you would have thought that Companies House might just help the aged every now and again and suggest that once they were over say 120 years old they might retire. Apparently not but such longevity is to be applauded. Just imagine the benefits of having the wisdom of a 945 year old at your board meeting. If he said he’d seen it all before surely his co-directors would listen?

We also discovered that at that date there were quite a large number of over-worked directors. There were 869 directors of over 50 but less than 100 live companies and 315 directors of over 100 live companies. One wonders how they cope with their responsibilities. We asked if these could be analyzed by nationality but sadly they couldn’t be.

If anyone from HMRC or Action Fraud is reading this article hopefully they might be inspired to look into some of these directors. Having such large numbers of live directorships nowadays is usually a sign of someone acting as a nominee for nefarious purposes.

Companies House commented: “As a registry of company information, we carry out basic checks to make sure that documents have been fully completed and signed, but we do not have the statutory power or capability to verify the accuracy of the information that companies send to us. We accept all information that companies deliver to us in good faith and place it on the public record. The fact that the information has been placed on the public record should not be taken to indicate that Companies House has verified or validated it in any way.”

Well they would say that wouldn’t they?

This article was first published on 6th November 2015.