Saudi Arabia's business registration system is about to undergo significant changes when the new Law of Commercial Register and Law of Trade Names go into effect on April 3. One of the main changes is that subsidiary registers will no longer be necessary; instead, a single commercial register will be sufficient. The laws were announced in September and also remove the need to specify the city of registration, meaning that a single commercial registration will be valid throughout the Kingdom.
The Law of Commercial Register "cancels the expiration date for the commercial register, requiring only an annual confirmation of the data," according to Abdulrahman Al-Hussein, the official spokeswoman for the Ministry of Commerce.
He emphasized that the establishment's unified number will now be the business registration number, beginning with "7."
There will be a five-year grace period for current subsidiary registries to adapt to the new rules.
In contrast to the former regulation, which only permitted Arabic names devoid of foreign characters or digits, the amended Trade Names Law now allows the reservation and registration of trade names in English, including letters and numbers.
Additionally, the amendment permits the transfer of ownership of trade names by allowing them to be administered independently of the establishment. It forbids different companies, regardless of their operations, from registering names that are the same or very similar.
Al-Hussein went on to say that this law establishes guidelines for names that are forbidden or deceptive and contains clauses for keeping family names as trade names.
