The privates of company directors

Image: The Privates, a Japanese rock band.

I’m doing my extract from the companies registration office in Luxembourg and have a burning question: Why do companies registration offices ask for the business address of the officers of companies registered there? Isn’t it pretty obvious they work at the place where the company has its registered office, which is mentioned in the company’s entry in the register anyway?

An address is intended to distinguish people who, just by chance, happen to have the same name and therefore, for legal purposes and “in order to distinguish them from all other people in the world”, have their addresses designated just to make sure we know exactly who we’re talking about. So, if there are two Joe Bloggs who work for Widgets Inc., we know that, unless they’re in a close intimate relationship with each other, one will live at 123 Whatsit Street and the other lives at 456 Thatsit Road. Putting them both as having a business address at 789 Corporate Identity Lane isn’t exactly that helpful. Not if we want to chase their ass for waltzing off with the company’s cash box, now, is it? Just exactly which one are we going after?

Point is, if they do waltz off with the company cash box, turning up at the company’s head office and asking, “Is Mr Bloggs in?” and getting the reply, “Which Mr Bloggs do you mean?” and saying, “The one who waltzed off with the cash box,” we are in fact likely to get a response, “Oh, he’s not in today, he waltzed off with the cash box.” And offering to wait is unlikely to resolve the impasse, I fear, as waiting rooms don’t tend to have 15 back issues of Flair magazine to hand these days. Much better is to hare it round to his private address to catch him in the arrant act of counting out the greenbacks, but where would that be? I know! Let’s look in the companies register.

“Oh, Bloggsy, oh, Bloggsy, wherefore hast thou no flipping private address in the companies register?” Well, if you ask me, it’s precisely because he’s the kind of person who doesn’t want camera crews lining up on the lawn to catch glimpses of him through net curtains as he stows his dosh into a haversack and plans his escape through the sewer …

Could be wrong, but why allow the suspicion of foul play when it makes no sense in matters of corporate honesty, criminal justice and knowing who the heck people even are?

AND, WHILST WE’RE AT IT, they can cut out all this nonsense with capital letters for their names: because we can’t see where the accents are in their nomenclatures, and WE CAN IN FACT BLOODY READ, SO YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT AT US. YOU’RE REALLY NOT THAT IMPORTANT, YOU KNOW.

and while were on that it really isnt cool to not use any capitals at all because that just looks like inverse snobbery sorry for the dutch and leaving out punctuation so we dont know what words are misspelled and what words are at the start or end of a sentence also doesnt help and nor do bright smart logos and messages thatlinkallthewordstogetheriononemakingthewholethingvirtuallyimpossibletoread doesnooneeverthinkaboutthepoorjapanese

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Someone on facebook (no capital - it’s deliberate) had a logo “FORWARDTOGETHER” and I asked “Who’s Ward and why must we support him to get her, and who’s she?” But I do like the meme of two spacemen: one says he can’t find any milk for his coffee, and the other one says “In space, no one can. Here, use cream.” It’s funny, even if a bit alien to most these days.