Company Formation

With respect to company formation, the majority of companies incorporated in Ireland are private limited companies. In this scenario, each shareholder’s liability is restricted to the number of shares that he or she owns.

Private limited companies must have the term “Limited” or “Ltd” after their business name. Shares in private limited company cannot be traded on stock exchanges.

Private Companies Limited by Shares (LTD companies) are registered under Part 2 of the Companies Act 2014.

Some features of a limited company formation include:

• It has limited liability.
• It has a maximum of 149 members.
• It can have a single director.
• An LTD company can have only one director if desired.

A limited company still needs to have a secretary and the secretary cannot be same person as the director, if the company has only one director. When starting the company formation process, Elysium Business Centre also provides a Nominee Company Secretary Service. This allows clients, who wish to establish a single director company, to satisfy the requirements of the 2014 Companies Act without having to employ a full-time or part-time Company Secretary.

All directors must be over the age of eighteen.

A company limited by shares (LTD) has a constitution. Under the Companies Act 2014, companies do not have stated objects if they are registered as a LTD company. Instead they have a single document constitution. The constitution states the name of the company and the fact that the company is a private company limited by shares. An LTD company does not need to hold an AGM.

(Source: Companies Registration Office)

All private limited companies must make annual returns to the CRO, regardless of whether they have actually traded during the year or not.

A private limited company usually has between one and four members (Shareholders). A single member company has only one shareholder.