The counterparty is your business partner: the concept brings together buyers and suppliers of goods, works or services. In fact, the counterparty refers to the party to the contractual relationship. A reliable, decent and conscientious counterparty is the key to the successful implementation of planned transactions.
But how to protect your business from partners' failure to fulfill their contractual obligations? After all, as a rule, in such cases, you can not only incur losses, but also violate your own obligations to third parties, and this will already damage your reputation. Therefore, the beginning of the contractual relationship should be preceded by the study of all available information about the counterparty. Counterparty verification can be carried out by your own company. For this, it is necessary to request from the responsible persons of the future partner not only the commercial and technical parameters of the upcoming transaction, but also the constituent documentation. First of all, study the extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities for the current date (information may change, so last year’s extract will not work), from this document you can get information about the composition of the founders and participants of the company, data on the payment of registered capital, follow the history of the company: how often owners of shares and shares changed, how stable the counterparty is.
This also confirms the current status of the counterparty, its legal capacity and non-presence in the liquidation or bankruptcy stage. Note that, due to the openness of the registry, an extract can also be obtained independently by contacting the branch of the Registration Chamber with a corresponding application. You should also request a copy of the Charter, the text of which will allow you to get acquainted with the powers of the executive
body of a legal entity, to compare them with the intended transaction. In the event that a deal is ahead that may prove to be large for the counterparty, be sure to check for the approval of the highest governing body of the company, since its absence in the future may be the basis for declaring the
transaction invalid in court.
It is definitely worth checking the fact that the company in question is not in the "black lists" of unreliable enterprises published on the network. And how to check the counterparty in terms of financial stability? Ask the company management to provide you with a copy of the financial statements along with the profit and loss balance sheet for previous periods, a tax certificate on the absence of tax debts. On the official website of the Arbitration Court, you can easily view information about past (and present) litigation in which your counterparty is the defendant.
All this will depict a detailed portrait of a company that has expressed a desire to cooperate, which will give you the opportunity to decide whether to enter into a relationship with this company (and under what conditions the risks will be minimal). But the disagreement of the potential counterparty to the presentation of the balance sheet, the charter or other information should alert you, because transparency and openness are a sign of confidence and integrity of the counterparties.