Four UK Companies Have Carried the Africori Name. Warner’s SEC Filing Names Only One.

On 27 June 2021, registered control of a London company that had spent six years trading as Africori (International) Ltd passed from one vehicle connected to Joel Kenan to another. The company receiving it was Kenket Ltd. No price appears on the filing, and nothing this desk read establishes whether the change was a sale, a gift or an internal reorganisation.

Warner Music Group was not part of it. One hundred and seventy six days later, on 20 December 2021, Warner Music Group Corp. registered itself as the person with significant control of a different London company, Africori Limited, number 07860646. Warner owns that one outright. It has never been registered as controlling the company covered here, and does not name it in its SEC subsidiary list.

Four UK companies have carried the Africori name. Warner’s subsidiary list names one. On 28 September 2026, the last of the other three applied to be struck off the register.

Four companies, one name

Africori Limited, number 07860646, was incorporated on 25 November 2011. It is the company Warner bought, and it is still active. Eighteen months later, on 26 June 2013, five further companies were incorporated on the same day, at the same address, Ground Floor, 31 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 8NL, and under the same SIC code, 59200, sound recording and music publishing activities.

Three took the Africori name: Africori Capital Ltd, number 08586164; Africori (International) Ltd, number 08586320; and Africori (UK) Ltd, number 08586857. Two did not: ACM Capital Ltd, number 08585675, and Kenket Ltd, number 08584994. Kenket Ltd has two directors on the register, Joel Kenan and Maria Gisella Amalia Garbagnati Ketvel.

On 11 December 2019, all three Africori-named companies in that group were renamed on the same day. Africori Capital became AMR Capital Ltd, Africori (International) became Africa Music International Ltd, and Africori (UK) became Africa Music (UK) Ltd. The register shows no change of registered office, SIC code or controlling party on that date. Only the names moved.

The chain of control, as the register records it

From 6 April 2016, the person with significant control of Africori (International) Ltd was Africori Capital Ltd, holding 75 per cent or more of the shares. On 27 June 2021 that entry ceased and Kenket Ltd was entered in its place, on the same band. That band is the only figure the register carries: Companies House does not publish an exact shareholding, so whether the holding was 75 per cent or 100 per cent is unknown.

Kenket Ltd’s own entry names a single controller: Mr Joel Kenan, date of birth September 1966, French nationality, place of residence South Africa, holding 75 per cent or more of the shares, notified 26 June 2016.

Africori Limited records the same individual in a different style. Its ceased controller is entered literally as “Ceo Joel Kenan”, same date of birth, nationality and residence, notified 6 April 2016 and ceased 20 December 2021, the day Warner’s entry begins. Africori’s founder is publicly named Yoel Kenan, while the UK register spells him Joel on every entry read here. This desk treats them as one person on the matching date of birth, nationality and residence, and records the discrepancy rather than smoothing it over.

A filing made eight months late, in a strike-off week

The 27 June 2021 change was not reported at the time. The PSC02 notifying Kenket Ltd, and the PSC07 ceasing Africori Capital Ltd, were both received for filing on 22 February 2022, around eight months after the event date they record.

That date is not a coincidence. On 22 February 2022 the registrar published a first Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off against the company. A confirmation statement was filed on 24 February, and on 25 February the strike-off was discontinued. The ownership change reached the register in the same week the company faced involuntary dissolution for not filing.

By then both companies on the outgoing side were gone. ACM Capital Ltd was dissolved on 19 October 2021. AMR Capital Ltd, the renamed Africori Capital Ltd, was dissolved on 26 October 2021, which is 55 days before Warner’s control of Africori Limited was registered. Africa Music (UK) Ltd followed on 5 April 2022.

What Warner’s own SEC filing names

Warner Music Group’s FY2025 annual report on Form 10-K, filed 20 November 2025, carries Exhibit 21.1, the list of significant subsidiaries. It names exactly two Africori entities: Africori Limited, United Kingdom, and Africori SA PTY LTD., South Africa. None of the five Kentish Town Road companies appears, and neither does Kenket Ltd.

Warner’s disclosed sequence on the company it does own runs: a minority investment in 2020, a majority stake in 2022, and full acquisition completed on 11 February 2025, with Africori continuing as a standalone entity. So this is not one company being carved up. It is two corporate groups that shared a brand name for six years around the same founder, one of which Warner bought and one of which Warner never touched.

The accounts say the company stopped trading

Africa Music International Ltd filed micro-entity accounts for the year ended 31 August 2025. The going concern note reads, verbatim: “The company ceased trading during the year. Following, the cessation of trade, the directors agreed to dissolve the company and apply for it to be struck off from companies house registrar by filing DS01 form.”

The balance sheet is small: fixed assets of £1,000, current assets of £6,273, creditors falling due within one year of £5,705, and net assets of £1,568, against net liabilities of £3,372 the year before. Zero employees. The line that matters is the one that is not there. The accounts record no intangible assets at all: no capitalised catalogue, no master recordings, no publishing rights, nothing of the kind that would normally sit on the books of a company registered under SIC 59200.

Two months to dissolution, and an anomaly in the order

The sequence this autumn: Ketvel’s directorship was terminated on 22 September 2026, filed on form TM01 on 28 September. The DS01 application for voluntary strike-off was signed by Joel Kenan and filed the same day. A RES01 resolution altering the articles was passed on 1 October, the first Gazette notice was published on 6 October, and new articles of association, 17 pages, were filed on 8 October.

A company cannot be struck off less than two months after the Gazette notice, so the earliest dissolution is around 6 December 2026. Its status today is “Active, Active proposal to strike off”. It is not dissolved, and a DS01 can be withdrawn on form DS02 before it takes effect.

The ordering is worth recording. Adopting new articles on 1 October, and filing them two days after the Gazette had advertised a dissolution applied for on 28 September, is an unusual order. This desk read the 17 pages and found a standard set of private company articles. No filed document explains the timing. If the company is struck off, whatever remains vests in the Crown as bona vacantia: on its own last accounts, net assets of £1,568 and no intellectual property.

What could not be established

No consideration. Control filings do not carry a price, and no accounts, charge or resolution read here discloses one. This record therefore does not call the transfer a sale.

No catalogue. MusicBrainz returns no label record for “Africori International”, “Africori UK”, “Africa Music International” or “Kenket”. The only Africori label entry in that registry is “Africori” itself. Whether these companies ever held or released recordings could not be established from any registry or filing.

No trading relationship. Nothing read here shows that Africori Limited, the Warner-owned company, ever owned, controlled, licensed to or distributed through any of the five Kentish Town Road companies. The only documented link is Joel Kenan personally. Readers should not infer that Warner sold, spun out or divested them: no document supports it, and control of 08586320 moved 176 days before Warner’s control of 07860646 was registered at all.

No filed document explains the 2019 renaming or the eight month delay. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission has no public search interface, so no Nigerian entity here could be checked.

What This Means for Artists

The lesson is about what a company name on a contract actually tells you, which is less than most artists assume.

Between 2013 and 2019, an artist or manager signing with something called Africori could have been contracting with any of four separate UK companies, three of them incorporated on the same day at the same address under the same SIC code. Only one of the four is the company Warner later bought. If your agreement named Africori (International) Ltd or Africori (UK) Ltd rather than Africori Limited, your counterparty is a different legal person from the Warner subsidiary, and two of those companies no longer exist.

That is not an accusation. Groups with multiple trading entities are ordinary, and a small dormant company wound up tidily is ordinary too. But the consequence for a rights holder is concrete: a contract binds the company named in it, and when that company is dissolved the counterparty you can chase is gone. Anything it still owned passes to the Crown rather than reverting to you. Rights do not come home automatically when a label is struck off.

So read the company number, not the brand, off the front page of your contract, and look it up on the register yourself, because it is free and takes a minute. Check whether that entity is still active and whether a strike-off notice stands against it, because the two month Gazette window is the only time you have to object. And if a major has acquired a label you were signed to, confirm which registered company it acquired, because owning the brand and owning your contract are not the same transaction.

On the documents read here, nothing has changed hands that touches an artist’s catalogue. What has changed is that a name three companies used to carry is now down to one, and the register is the only place that records it.