This engineering company had acquired the assets of another company in the same group as part of a restructure carried out before we were instructed. Those assets included a number of software licences granted by a well known provider of accounting software who were unwilling to transfer the licences into the name of the client without either up to date accounts of the group (which would have been expensive and time-consuming to prepare) or a letter from a firm of solicitors confirming that the client and the transferor company are part of the same group.
We searched the information about the group companies available publicly at Companies House and in doing so identified a number of anomalies which the client was then able to correct. Once we were satisfied that Companies House’s records were accurate, we were in a position to write to the software provider confirming that the client and the transferor company are part of the same group. We were able to provide the letter within the deadline imposed by the software provider and save the client the expense and inconvenience of preparing group accounts.
