Companies Office NZ

The Companies Office is a business unit within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). It administers the official registers where New Zealand companies and other business entities are recorded, including the Companies Register.

Its role is to receive and hold the information that companies are required to file under New Zealand law, and to make much of that information available to the public.

The Companies Office is responsible for functions such as:

• Incorporating new companies and reserving company names
• Maintaining the Companies Register, including director, shareholder and address records
• Receiving annual returns and other statutory filings
• Recording changes of company status, such as liquidation, receivership or removal
• Administering related registers, including registers for other entity types
• Issuing certificates of incorporation and other official extracts

The Companies Office records the information companies file. It does not investigate or verify every detail at the time of filing, and it does not provide opinions about whether a company is trustworthy.

The Companies Office is a registrar, not an endorsement body. A company being registered does not mean the government has assessed its honesty, financial health or business practices. Registration simply means the company exists as a legal entity and has met the formal requirements for incorporation.

Company Search New Zealand is an independent search and reporting service and is not affiliated with the New Zealand Companies Office, MBIE or the Insolvency and Trustee Service.

We do not administer any register and we cannot change what is recorded on one. What we do is retrieve publicly available register information and present it in clear, convenient reports, so you can check a company quickly without navigating multiple government systems yourself. Our reports are not official extracts from any register.

If you need to incorporate a company, file an annual return, update register details or obtain an official certificate, those services are provided by the Companies Office itself, not by this site.