S.A. (corporation)

S.A. (and variants) designates a type of corporation in countries that mostly employ civil law. Depending on language, it means anonymous company, anonymous partnership, or share company, roughly equivalent to public limited company in common law jurisdictions. It is different from partnerships and private limited companies.

Originally shareholders could be literally anonymous, and collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates. Dividends were therefore paid to whoever held the certificate. Share certificates could be transferred privately, and therefore the management of the company would not necessarily know who owned its shares. The shareholders were anonymous.

Like bearer bonds, anonymous, unregistered share ownership and dividend collection enabled money laundering, tax evasion, and concealed business transactions in general, so governments passed laws to eradicate the practice. Nowadays, shareholders of S.A.s are not anonymous, though shares can still be held by holding companies, in order to obscure the beneficial owner.

In different countries

S.A. can be an abbreviation of:

[Sociedad Anónima] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) or [Sociedad por Acciones] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Spanish; variations include Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable (S.A. de C.V.) and Sociedad Anónima Bursátil de Capital Variable (S.A.B. de C.V.) for publicly traded companies in Mexico
- Mexico also has Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada de Capital Variable (S. de R. L. de C.V.)
[Societat Anònima] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Catalan
[Sociedade Anónima] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Galician and Portuguese (used in Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Timor Leste, Macao, Mozambique and other Portuguese-speaking countries)
[Sociedá Anónima] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Asturian and Leonese
[Società Anonima] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Italian (since 1942 [Società per Azioni] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), S.p.A.)
[Société Anonyme] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in French (as used in French-speaking countries such as France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Monaco; and in partially Francophone countries like Belgium, and Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania and other African countries)
[Spółka Akcyjna] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Polish
[Societate pe Acțiuni] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Romanian

It is equivalent in literal meaning and function to:

[Anonim Şirket (A.Ş.)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Turkish
[Ανώνυμη Εταιρεία] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Anonymi Etaireia (A.E.) in Greek
[Naamloze vennootschap (N.V.)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Dutch
[Perseroan Terbatas Terbuka (P.T. Tbk.)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Indonesia
[Sendirian Berhad (Sdn. Bhd.)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Malaysia

It is equivalent in function to:

Aktiengesellschaft (AG) in German
Osakeyhtiö (Oy) in Finnish
Aktiebolag (AB) in Swedish
Részvénytársaság (Rt) in Hungarian
[Akcinė bendrovė] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (AB) in Lithuanian
[Akciju Sabiedrība] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (AS) in Latvian
Aktieselskab (A/S) in Danish
Aksjeselskap (AS) in Norwegian
[Akciová spoločnosť] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (a.s.) in Slovak
[Akciová společnost] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (a.s.) in Czech
[Акционерное общество] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Aktsionernoye obshchestvo (AO) in Russian
[Акціонерне товариство] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), [Aktsionerne tovarystvo] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: ua (help) (AT) in Ukrainian
[Акционерно дружество] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Aktsionerno druzhestvo (АД) in Bulgarian
[Shoqëri Aksionare (Sh.a.)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Albanian
[Delniška družba] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (d.d.) in Slovene
[Dioničko društvo] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (d.d.) in Croatian and Bosnian
[Деоничарско друштво, Deoničarsko društvo (d.d.), or Акционарско друштво, Akcionarsko društvo] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (a.d.) in Serbian
[Public limited company] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (plc) in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and several Commonwealth countries
[Publicly traded company] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in the United States, though that term does not appear in the names of business entities
شركة مساهمة عامة ذات مسؤولية محدودة ( ش.ذ.م.م.) in Arabic.
Société anonyme égyptienne (SAE) or شركة مساهمة مصرية (ش.م.م.) in Egypt.
Kabushiki Kaisha (K.K.) or 株式会社 in Japan.

External links

Global Witness on Anonymous Companies