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.

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:

• Sociedade Anónima in Galician and European Portuguese (used in Portugal, Angola, Timor Leste, Macao, Mozambique and other Portuguese-speaking countries)
• Sociedá Anónima in Asturian and Leonese
• Sociedade Anônima in Brazilian Portuguese (used in Brazil)
• Societat Anònima in Catalan
• Société anonyme in French (as used in French-speaking countries such as France (including French Polynesia, and New Caledonia) and Monaco; also in partially Francophone countries and/or nations with French as one of their official languages like Belgium, Luxembourg, Quebec, Haiti, Switzerland, as well as Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Algeria and other African countries)
• Società Anonima in Italian (since 1942 Società per Azioni, S.p.A.)
• Sociedad Anónima or Sociedad por Acciones 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.)
• Spółka Akcyjna in Polish
• Societate pe Acțiuni in Romanian

It is equivalent in literal meaning and function to:

• Naamloze vennootschap (N.V.) in Dutch
• Ανώνυμη Εταιρεία, Anonymi Etaireia (A.E.) in Greek
• Perseroan Terbatas Terbuka (P.T. Tbk.) in Indonesia
• Berhad (Bhd.) in Malaysia
• Anonim Şirket (A.Ş.) in Turkish

It is equivalent in function to:

• Shoqëri Aksionare (Sh.a.) in Albanian
• (.شركة مساهة عامة ذات مسؤولية محدودة (ش.ذ.م.م in Arabic
• Dioničko društvo (d.d.) in Croatian and Bosnian
• Акционерно дружество, Aktsionerno druzhestvo (АД) in Bulgarian
• Акционерско друштво, Aktsionersko drushtvo (АД) in Macedonian
• Société anonyme cambodgienne (S.A.C.) in Cambodia
• Akciová společnost (a.s.) in Czech
• Aktieselskab (A/S) in Danish
• Société anonyme égyptienne (S.A.E.) or (.شركة مساهة مصرية (ش.م.م in Egypt
• Osakeyhtiö (Oy) in Finnish
• Aktiengesellschaft (AG) in German
• Részvénytársaság (Rt) in Hungarian
• Hlutafélag in Icelandic
• Public Limited (LTD.) in India
• Public limited company (plc) in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and several Commonwealth countries
• Kabushiki Gaisha (K.K.) or 株式会社 in Japan
• 주식회사 in Korea
• Société anonyme laotienne (S.A.L.) in Laos
• Akcinė bendrovė (AB) in Lithuanian
• Akciju Sabiedrība (AS) in Latvian
• Aksjeselskap (AS) in Norwegian
• Акционерное общество, Aktsionernoye obshchestvo (AO) in Russian
• Деоничарско друштво, Deoničarsko društvo (d.d.), or Акционарско друштво, Akcionarsko društvo (a.d.) in Serbian
• Akciová spoločnosť (a.s.) in Slovak
• Delniška družba (d.d.) in Slovene
• Aktiebolag (AB) in Swedish
• Акціонерне товариство, Aktsionerne tovarystvo (AT) in Ukrainian
• Publicly traded company in the United States, though that term does not appear in the names of business entities

External links

• Global Witness on Anonymous Companies