Not automatically. The companies must meet the applicable affiliate definition through ownership and control. A few common shareholders or an informal agreement to cooperate may be insufficient.
Compare both complete structures
Show all owners, proportions and voting rights, not only the interests held by the beneficiary. Counsel can then assess common ownership and control against the regulatory definitions. The business relationship is only one part of L-1A: the qualifying foreign employment and primarily managerial or executive U.S.
assignment need their own evidence. Shared branding cannot substitute for any of those elements. What answers this is a complete ownership schedule for both companies, not a list of the shareholders the parties consider relevant.
Hypothetical example: three siblings hold interests in a Canadian equine facility and two of them hold interests in a U.S. boarding business alongside an outside investor. Whether an affiliate relationship exists depends on the whole picture, including the investor holding and any voting agreement, and cannot be inferred from the sibling relationship.
Prepare both schedules with proportions and attached rights, cite the register supporting each line, and date them. Then have counsel apply the affiliate definition to what the schedules actually show. An informal understanding that the businesses cooperate carries no weight in that analysis, and a shared surname carries none either.
The beneficiary must separately have completed one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three preceding years.