Is your counterpart reliable? You need to know this before making a deal

Counterparty is your business partner: the concept unites buyers and suppliers of goods, works or services. In fact, a counterparty is understood as a party to a contractual relationship. A reliable, honest and conscientious counterpart is the key to successful implementation of the planned transactions.

But how can we protect our business from the failure of partners to accept the obligations accepted under the agreements? After all, as a rule, in such cases you can not only incur losses, but also violate your own duties to third parties, and this will already damage your reputation. Therefore, the beginning of contractual relations should be preceded by work on the study of all available information about the counterparty. Checking counterparties can be carried out by your own forces. To do this, it is necessary to ask the responsible persons of the future partner not only the commercial and technical parameters of the forthcoming transaction, but also the constituent documentation. First of all, study the extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities for the current date (the information may change, so last year's statement will not work), from this document you can get information about the composition of the founders and participants of the company, data on payment of the authorized capital, trace the history of the company: how often The owners of shares and shares changed to what extent the counterparty is stable.

This also confirms the actual status of the counterparty, his legal capacity and non-availability in the liquidation or bankruptcy phase. Note that, due to the openness of the registry, you can get an extract yourself, by applying with the appropriate application to the branch of the Registration Chamber. You should also request a copy of the Charter, the text of which will allow you to familiarize yourself with the powers of the executive body of the legal entity, to compare them with the intended transaction. In case there is a deal that may be large for the counterparty, be sure to check the presence of approving decisions of the company's top management body, since its absence in the future can be grounds for the recognition of the transaction as invalid in court.

It is necessary to check the fact of absence of the company in question in the "black lists" of unreliable enterprises published in the network. And how to check a counterparty in terms of financial sustainability? Ask the company's management to provide you with a copy of the financial statements together with the balance sheet on profits and losses for the previous periods, a certificate from the tax office on the absence of tax arrears. On the official website of the Arbitration Court, you can easily see information about past legal proceedings (and existing in the present time), the defendant in which is your counterparty.

This will all outline a detailed portrait of the company that has expressed a desire to cooperate, which will give you an opportunity to decide whether to enter into a relationship with this enterprise (and under what conditions the risks will be minimal). But the disagreement of a potential counterparty to present a balance sheet, charter or other information should alert you, because transparency and openness are a sign of the confidence and integrity of counterparties.