Global legal entity ownership data available in line with latest version of data standard

Corporate ownership data for millions of entities listed by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has been transformed and republished in line with the latest version of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS).

The resulting dataset can be freely downloaded, reused, or analysed through our data analysis tools and is republished under an open licence.

It is the first dataset to be published in line with version 0.4 of BODS.

GLEIF is tasked by the G20 with supporting the implementation of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), a global identifier for any entity that engages in financial transactions.

The organisation enables “smarter, less costly and more reliable decisions about who to do business with” by providing “open, standardised and high quality legal entity reference data” to uniquely identify companies. This open data includes Level 2 Data on who owns whom.

Understanding ownership structures is a key part of Open Ownership’s mission to drive the global shift towards transparency over who owns and controls companies and other corporate vehicles. We focus on beneficial ownership transparency, which shows how natural persons own or control companies and other legal entities or arrangements, such as trusts.

The corporate ownership data collected and published by GLEIF is not beneficial ownership data, as it does not identify the natural persons at the end of ownership chains. Yet, this data gives crucial insights into corporate ownership structures by offering detailed information on how companies own or control other companies, as well as offering mappings to other datasets, such as sanctions, watch, and politically exposed persons lists.

The LEI opens up the possibility to greatly streamline the entity identification process. It serves as a data connector, starting with accurate identification of the involved entities and their direct and indirect connections with other corporate vehicles, which means faster, cheaper, and simpler compliance. Read more in this introduction to the Transparency Fabric, a joint initiative by GLEIF, Open Ownership, and OpenSanctions to use the LEI to enhance sanctions and anti-money laundering screening.

Since 2023, Open Ownership has partnered with GLEIF to promote greater transparency in corporate ownership and control, supporting safer, faster, and more efficient payment activities globally and a more secure international financial landscape.

GLEIF’s data was first mapped to version 0.2 of BODS in April 2023. This process was updated in August 2024 to better capture the lifecycle of LEI data changes.

On GitHub, you can see how Open Ownership has updated how we ingest, map, and transform this data in line with BODS version 0.4. The dataset will be refreshed on a regular basis.

We have also written a data use guide to explain our new process and to better support those who want to reuse the updated dataset.

This work is part of Open Ownership’s strategy to ensure more and higher-quality data on the ownership and control of corporate vehicles is available to stakeholders in governments, companies, and civil society.