DCHP-2

numbered company DCHP-2 (July 2016)

• n. — Administration

  a corporation with a generic name, comprised of its assigned registration number followed by the province in which it is registered, or by "Canada" in the cases of federal companies.

  Type: 5. Frequency — Since corporations are not required to have names, business owners may choose to file incorporation applications without a name, and are instead assigned a generic numbered company name (see the 2016 quotation). As seen in Chart 1, this business procedure is practiced mainly in Canada and, more recently, in Ireland, which is now leading in terms of frequency. Australia has had a similar program, called the "Australian Company Number", or ACN (see ASIC website), but the terms does not nearly have the frequency of Canada and Ireland. Numbered companies may include, but are not limited to, shell companies (not necessarily for illicit purposes), or new companies that have not yet chosen a corporate name.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "numbered company", which labels the term "Cdn".