Executive business management teams of franchising organizations had to change the way they did things after 9/11. This is because it is very important who owns your franchises and to their partners, investors and associates are. For instance in Dallas there was a franchised outlet owned by folks who were funneling money to Al Qaeda. The match in what the Franchisor thought when they were contacted by the FBI?

Unfortunately this situation is not rare, as many people who have come to the United States from other nations by franchises because in their old countries they were self-employed. Some of these people still have ties to people in their former country who are not such good apples. It is this is problematic although there are ways to protect the franchising company from this happening.

It also depends on how the UFOC of the franchisor is structured and it behooves the Franchisor to require that all partners of so much interest to be listed in the franchising agreement when it is signed. If it were a limited partnership, perhaps this might not be the case in some of the older documents, but now Franchisor's need to pay more attention to this. It depends on their partnership agreement and the franchisors policy.

In our franchising company after 9-11 we modified our franchise agreements because we wanted to know exactly who was involved in every one of our outlets. And franchising companies must remember that not all UFOCs are equal and certainly not all those who prepare them know what they are doing. Many franchise attorneys or UFOC preparers are not equally yoked or genetically equal? So, please consider this a 2006.