Behind every company there is ultimately one or more individuals. The term ultimate beneficial owner (UBO, or reell rettighetshaver in Norwegian) refers to the natural person who ultimately owns or controls a business.
What is a beneficial owner?
A beneficial owner is a natural person who, directly or indirectly:
- owns more than 25% of the shares or votes in a company, or
- exercises control over the company by other means — through agreements, articles of association or another structure
If no individual meets these criteria (for example in a company with very dispersed ownership), the company's general manager or chair of the board is registered as the beneficial owner instead.
Why does the UBO matter?
Identifying beneficial owners is a central tool in the fight against money laundering and tax crime. Criminals often use complex corporate structures — holding companies across several countries, front men and nominee owners — to conceal who really controls assets.
Norwegian law (the Anti-Money Laundering Act) requires banks, accountants, lawyers and estate agents to identify and verify their customers' beneficial owners as part of the KYC (Know Your Customer) process.
The register of beneficial owners
Since 2024, Norwegian companies have been required to register their beneficial owners in a dedicated public register at the Brønnøysund Register Centre. This makes it easier for authorities and businesses to identify who actually controls a company.
How to find the beneficial owner in practice
For simple structures — where one person owns 100% of an AS directly — the beneficial owner is obvious. The challenge arises in complex group structures with several layers:
- Find the direct shareholders of the company (available in the shareholder register)
- For each corporate shareholder: find its shareholders
- Continue up the chain until you reach the natural persons controlling more than 25%
In practice this can mean working through four, five or more ownership layers. The ownership graph on Biztrac makes this easier by visualising the entire structure interactively — you can click your way up the ownership chain and see who ultimately controls a company.
Example
Ola Nordmann owns 100% of "Nordmann Holding AS", which in turn owns 80% of "Nordmann Eiendom AS". The beneficial owner of Nordmann Eiendom AS is Ola Nordmann — even though his name does not appear directly on the shareholder list of Nordmann Eiendom AS. He owns 80% indirectly, which exceeds the 25% threshold.