Companies operating in Nepal don't answer to a single regulator or a single law. Depending on what a business does, it may owe filings and disclosures to the Office of Company Registrar, the Department of Industry, Nepal Rastra Bank, the Securities Board of Nepal, the Inland Revenue Department, and the local ward office — sometimes all in the same year. These obligations exist to keep the corporate sector transparent, and skipping them isn't a minor administrative slip. It creates real liability: penalties, restrictions on how the company can operate, and, if it drags on, trouble with something as basic as a bank transaction or a share transfer.

Bhandari Law and Partners has lawyers in Nepal who work in this space regularly and understand Nepalese corporate law well enough to know which filings actually matter for a given business, not just what's technically required on paper. Our clients tend to be companies operating in more heavily regulated sectors, where the compliance calendar is longer and the consequences of missing something are more serious.

The Compliance Landscape

Most of this work traces back to the Companies Act, 2063 (2006), which requires registered companies — private, public, foreign-invested, joint venture, even dormant ones — to keep their information current with the Office of Company Registrar. That includes annual returns confirming directors, shareholders, and capital structure, audited financial statements, and board and shareholder meeting records. Public and larger private companies carry extra obligations around their AGM, including a pre-AGM report to the registrar. On top of the Companies Act baseline, sector-specific rules apply for banking, insurance, telecommunications, securities, and hydropower companies, and foreign-invested companies have their own reporting layer tied to FITTA and Nepal Rastra Bank's foreign exchange requirements.

None of this is complicated in isolation. What makes it hard is the number of moving parts and how easily one missed deadline compounds into the next.

What We Do

Licensing and approvals

We advise on what licenses or approvals a business needs, and help get them.

Regulatory filings

We prepare and submit the compliance documents companies owe to the Department of Industry, the Office of Company Registrar, Nepal Rastra Bank, the Securities Board of Nepal, the Inland Revenue Office, and local government authorities.

Compliance due diligence

We review a company's existing filings and practices to identify where it's fallen out of compliance, then put together a practical plan to fix it.

Internal investigations

Where something looks wrong internally — a discrepancy, a complaint, a red flag from a regulator — we investigate it properly before it becomes a bigger problem.

Regulator response

When a regulator raises a question or opens an inquiry, we handle the response.

Compliance programs

Beyond individual filings, we help clients build compliance programs that actually work day to day — developing the policies, putting them into practice, and monitoring that they're being followed, backed by in-house training so the people responsible for compliance understand what they're doing and why.

Getting this right isn't just about avoiding penalties. A company that stays on top of its filings keeps its legal standing intact and avoids the kind of last-minute scramble that ends up costing far more — in time and in fees — than staying current would have.

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