Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of expanding the definition of de facto directors to include natural person directors of corporate directors.

The Government plans to make several changes to the rules governing corporate directors, including requirements that corporate directors of limited companies must be entities with legal personality, directors (or equivalents) of corporate director entities must all be natural persons and be subject to ID verification, and that corporate directors must be UK-registered.

Any person is a de facto director if they assume the status and functions of a company director even if they have not been properly appointed. It is not possible to expand the definition of a de facto director, it being a factual rather than a legal status.