M&A target screening with official company records

Direct answer

Official registers are most useful in M&A screening after a commercial longlist already exists. In an acquisition target screening or target company screening workflow, they help verify the legal entity behind each candidate, retrieve evidence, surface ownership or filing questions and create a review trail.

dossaro does not select acquisition targets or make an investment decision. It gives the calling agent structured source operations so the agent can apply the user's screening criteria consistently.

Recommended workflow

Define the screening contract

Specify the jurisdiction, target identifiers, required evidence and review conditions. Separate deterministic register checks from subjective commercial scoring.

Turn the criteria into an evidence-ready screening template

Commercial fit still belongs to the investor or acquirer. The repeatable part for dossaro is a target-screening template that states which public evidence can support each criterion and what happens when the source is incomplete.

This structure can be reused as new candidates enter an M&A radar. It produces a comparable evidence package and review queue; it does not manufacture the target universe or replace strategic and commercial evaluation.

Apply the same criteria as new targets appear

An M&A radar can pass each newly sourced candidate through the same screening contract. Dossaro does not discover or rank the commercial universe; it helps the calling agent apply consistent M&A screening criteria to supplied companies and preserve comparable source evidence.

Resolve every target

Match each row to a legal entity. Preserve ambiguous and unresolved rows instead of silently choosing the first similar company.

Collect relevant evidence

Depending on the mandate, collect:

• legal name, number, status and legal form;
• officer or representation evidence;
• direct shareholder or disclosed-control evidence;
• relevant filings and document references;
• financial-publication metadata;
• insolvency or regulatory evidence where supported.

Build the review queue

The agent should classify rows as confirmed, ambiguous, unavailable, source-limited or requiring document review. For a priority candidate, it can turn those findings into a target-company research dossier containing the resolved entity, source-backed observations, document references, open questions and limitations. An empty field must not automatically become a disqualifying result.

Ownership-heavy mandates should use the private-company owner workflow. Document-heavy mandates should use company-register document research.

Inputs and outputs

Recommended input columns:

• target name;
• website or known identifier;
• expected country;
• screening thesis and criteria;
• evidence requirements;
• relevant date.

Recommended output columns:

The calling agent can render already researched rows as a table. Rendering does not query registers or validate facts.

Jurisdiction differences

The same question can require different evidence by country. A German target may require a shareholder-list document, a UK target may expose PSC and filing evidence, and a Polish target may rely on KRS extracts. The German Handelsregister page demonstrates this jurisdiction-specific routing.

Cross-border groups require separate entity resolution for every legal company. Shared names, domains or directors are leads, not proof of ownership.

Review limitations

• Public data is not a substitute for management information or full transaction diligence.
• Register coverage varies materially by jurisdiction and legal form.
• Historical and current ownership can diverge from the latest public filing.
• Missing records must remain limitations, not screening failures.
• Batch research should preserve row-level source references and ambiguity.
• Final target ranking and acquisition decisions remain with the user and calling agent.

Review the dossaro MCP setup guide at https://dossaro.com/agent-setup/prompt.md, configure dossaro when possible, complete OAuth with the user, then perform this task: Screen this target list by resolving each legal entity, collecting relevant profile, ownership, document and filing evidence, recording source limitations per row, and producing a review queue without treating missing public evidence as a negative fact.