Legal Predecessors and Successors

Overview

relationships.legalPredecessors and relationships.legalSuccessors link a company to the companies whose legal rights and obligations passed to or from it in a merger (fusion) or demerger (spaltning). They answer questions such as "which company did this dissolved company merge into?" without reading the full register extract.

• legalSuccessors: companies that took over this company's rights and obligations, in whole (a merger) or in part (a demerger).
• legalPredecessors: companies this company took over, in whole or in part.

Each entry names one company, so a demerger into three companies produces three successors. Danish (dk) and Greenlandic (gl) company reports carry both lists.

Reading an entry

A company in the Danish register carries its CVR number and a kausate_id identifier you can order its own report with. A foreign company carries the number its own register issued, as the Danish register printed it (xx_unknown, with the company's jurisdictionCode).

An empty or absent list means the register records no merger or demerger counterparty for the company. A dissolved company's basicInformation.status still shows how it was dissolved (for example Opløst efter fusion), including in the rare case where the register names no counterparty.

Example

FALCK FIRE SERVICES A/S was absorbed by FALCK DANMARK A/S in 2022, having itself absorbed a Greenlandic sister company in 2017:

"relationships": {
  "legalSuccessors": [
    {
      "company": {
        "name": "FALCK DANMARK A/S",
        "jurisdictionCode": "dk",
        "identifiers": [
          { "type": "dk_cvr_number", "value": "16271241" },
          { "type": "kausate_id", "value": "co_dk_66sw9MyRQgmaaVVfLSxQrW" }
        ]
      },
      "date": "2022-11-29",
      "restructuring": "merger",
      "source": "dk-central-business-register"
    }
  ],
  "legalPredecessors": [
    {
      "company": {
        "name": "FALCK FIRE SERVICES GREENLAND A/S",
        "jurisdictionCode": "dk",
        "identifiers": [
          { "type": "dk_cvr_number", "value": "35846697" },
          { "type": "kausate_id", "value": "co_dk_1sZmNoPZ8KxzWKdYtxKwxr" }
        ]
      },
      "date": "2017-12-01",
      "restructuring": "merger",
      "source": "dk-central-business-register"
    }
  ]
}

Denmark

The Danish Central Business Register (CVR) records most mergers and demergers as structured events. Where it does not (every cross-border merger, older registrations, and receivers missing from a demerger's event), Kausate reads the counterparty from the register's own registration texts, including pre-1992 registration numbers and foreign companies. A cross-border merger's foreign successor appears with its own register's number.