Recital 127

(127) In view of the purpose of determining beneficial ownership, which is to ensure effective transparency of legal entities, it is proportionate to exempt certain entities from the obligation to identify their beneficial owner. Such a regime can only be applied to entities for which the identification and registration of their beneficial owners is not useful and where the similar level of transparency is achieved by means other than beneficial ownership. In that respect, bodies governed by public law of the Member States should not be obliged to determine their beneficial owner. Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (27) introduced strict transparency requirements for companies whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market. In certain circumstances, those transparency requirements can achieve an equivalent transparency regime to the beneficial ownership transparency rules set out in this Regulation. That is the case where control over the company is exercised through voting rights, and the ownership or control structure of the company only includes natural persons. In those circumstances, there is no need to apply beneficial ownership requirements to those listed companies. The exemption for legal entities from the obligation to determine their own beneficial owner and to register it should not affect the obligation of obliged entities to identify the beneficial owner of a customer when performing customer due diligence.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-09-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.