Written as editor of the New Statesman’s NS Tech and first published here.

Compliance and risk aren’t exactly the sexist topics – but you’ll certainly feel the full force of the law if you’re making a big business transaction and something goes wrong.

London’s DueDil has been working since 2011 to make private business information, like that contained over Companies House, actually useful to business professionals.

It’s now added an Ownership hub to its data visualisation platform, making it simple for you to view corporate governance data for companies you may be thinking of getting involved with.

Many companies now have complex shareholder structures, but DueDil has made its new interface easy to see who owns what.

When trying to make connections between owners, shareholders, investments and subsidiaries, it now gives a ‘confidence score’ for related companies, even where there is not always a clear link.

We had a demo of the updated tool here at NS Tech and it beats the PDF-based system at Companies House hands down.

You can get a free trial of the DueDil Platform now and, just for fun, you can even use it to find out more about who owns DueDil.