Norwegian companies API: Meet Business Register of Norway
All about Norwegian companies information: access to the Register of Business Enterprises BRREG via Brønnøysund Register Centre, its public company data scope, types of companies and the current number of companies operating in Norway.
This is another in a series of our articles describing reliable sources of information about European companies. So far, we have already written about the commercial registers of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, Estonia, UK, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland, now we are heading north, to Norway.
Meet Brønnøysundregistrene — the Register of Business Enterprises of Norway
The official Norway business register, Brønnøysundregistrene, is maintained by the government agency Brønnøysund Register Centre (known also as BRC) and is a subsidiary of the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry. It is also popularly called its abbreviation, BRREG, and can be found under just such a named domain www.brreg.no .
The Register of Business Enterprises of Norway is public and gives free access to Norway company information search, but it is worth bearing in mind that it is run only in Norwegian, without the English version of the site.
To search for a company in the Norwegian business register, it is necessary to know its registration number or name. As in many other search engines, it is definitely better to use the number in Brønnøysundregistrene — the search will then be more accurate and we can be sure that there will be no error.
It was founded quite some time ago, in 1988. An interesting fact is that the name of Norwegian commercial register, Brønnøysundregistrene, comes directly from the small city that has only five thousand people. Really, the Brønnøysund Register Centre is literally located in Brønnøysund. It must be admitted that this is a rather unusual choice for the headquarters of a facility where all Norwegian companies are registered.
What kind of business information BRREG provides?
The Business Register of Norway, BRREG, is a modernly designed internet database that clearly and legibly provides various types of registration information. There are not a few of them and they are not limited, so they can be a solid starting point in the process of risk verification of cooperation with Norwegian companies.
Brønnøysundregistrene provides exactly these types of business information about Norwegian companies:
- company number (9 digits identification number in Norway)
- company name
- origin country register number (if exists, because sometimes not)
- company business status (active or not)
- legal form type and its code
- company manner of representation
- institutional sector code
- business scope description
- SIC numbers (main, secondary and tertiary type of business activity)
- number of employees
- incorporation date & commencement date
- ownership date
- dissolution date
- confirmation that the economic entity is in the register of VAT payers
- information about bankruptcy and liquidation (compulsory or enforced)
- main address, post address and location address
- company website
- year of the last financial accounts submitted
- statutory purpose
- chairman and board members information (names, surnames, roles)
- information about companies connected with the economic entity (business relation type, company name, address).
Number of companies in Norway 2020
According to data from our API, which aggregates information directly from the database of Brønnøysund Register Centre, currently, as of December 2020, there are over 1.83 million actively operating economic entities in Norway. Among them we will find not only companies, but also sole proprietorships, associations, foundations and state owned companies. As usual, it is therefore better to look at the values of not all records, but the number of a specific type of company.
The number of different types of companies in Norway in 2020, presents as follows:
- 363,6 thousand joint-stock companies
- 15.6 thousand companies known as general partnerships
- 1.7 thousand limited liability companies
- 270 limited partnerships
- 218 public limited companies
- 446 thousand entrepreneurial natural persons (sole proprietorships).
Types of companies in Norway
There are 43 types of legal entities in Norway, what is quite a lot. The most popular legal types codes for Norwegian companies registered in Brønnøysundregistrene are: AS for joint stock company, DA for general partnership, BA for company with limited liability, ASA for public limited company, KS for limited partnership.
Norwegian-English dictionary of the most popular types of legal entities in Norway:
- Aksjeselskap— joint-stock company
- Selskap med begrenset ansvar — limited liability company
- Ansvarlig selskap med delt ansvar — general partnership company
- Allmennaksjeselskap — public limited company
- Kommandittselskap — limited partnership company
- Samvirkeforetak — cooperative
- Enkeltpersonforetak — sole proprietorship
- Statsforetak — state owned enterprises
- Europeisk selskap— European association (societas europea)
- Norskregistrert utenlandsk foretak — branch of foreign company
A few interesting facts about Norway
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world
Despite the fact that the population of Norway is only 5 million people, and the mountainous terrain in which this country is located is not "friendly", Norway can boast the second-highest GDP per-capita among European countries and the sixth-highest GDP (PPP) per-capita in the world.
Main Norway’s industries
Main industries of Norway have always been oil and fishing. Norway is the fifth-largest oil exporter and third-largest gas exporter in the world and the world’s second-largest exporter of fish.
Norway is not in the UE
Many people mistakenly believe that such a European country as Norway belongs to the European Union. However, it is not so. In return, it belongs to the Schengen visa treaty and The European Economic Area (EEA) and for this reason it receives similar benefits as the EU member states.
The largest cities in Norway are not "that" big at all
The largest cities in Norway are, of course, the capital of the country, Oslo (population 697,500), Stavanger (population 135 thousand), Bergen (population 183 thousand) and Trondheim (population 205 thousand).
Norwegian Companies API
The Norwegian companies API of our data software house, Transparent Data, gives real-time access to all the information gathered in The Register of Business Enterprises of Norway, Brønnøysundregistrene. We have already described the full data scope above.
Full documentation of Norwegian company information API you can view HERE. If you need data about companies directly in your internal system or analytical tool, reviewing the structured description of the API operation is the best source of information each time.
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