S.A. (corporation)

The abbreviation S.A. or SA designates a type of limited company in certain countries, most of which have a Romance language as their official language and employ civil law. 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.

As with 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 audit the practice. Nowadays, shareholders of S.A.s are not anonymous, though shares can still be held by a holding company in order to obscure the beneficiary.

In different countries

S.A. can be an abbreviation of:
* in Galician and European Portuguese (used in Portugal, Timor Leste, Macao, and Lusophone Africa)
** in Brazilian Portuguese (used in Brazil)
* in Asturian and Leonese
* in Catalan
* (SA) 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 (where it is equivalent to a '' naamloze vennootschap''), Luxembourg (also identifiable in Luxembourgish as ), Haiti, Switzerland (where it is equivalent to an or a ), as well as Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Algeria and other African countries)
** in Canadian French
* in Swiss Italian (in Italy replaced by , S.p.A., since 1942)
* or in Spanish
** Mexican law also takes into account the variability of the corporate stock, resulting in most S.A. turning into (S.A. de C.V.), or (S.A.B. de C.V.) for publicly traded companies.
** Mexico also has , which is analogous to the limited liability company.
* in Polish
* in Romanian

The Greek term (, A.E.) is usually translated into S.A. in English and foreign languages.

It is equivalent in literal meaning and function to:
* (N.V.) in Dutch
* (P.T. Tbk.) in Indonesia
* (Bhd.) in Malaysia
* (A.Ş.) or ''Anonim Ortaklık'' (A.O.) in Turkish
* (C.A.) in Ecuador and Venezuela

It is equivalent in function to:
* in Albanian
* , () in Arabic
* (d.d.) in Croatian and Bosnian
* , (АД) in Bulgarian
* , (АД) in Macedonian
* (a.s.) in Czech
* (A/S) in Danish
* (S.A.E.) or (, , abbreviated ) in Egypt
* (Oy) in Finnish
* (AS) in Estonian
* (AG) in German
* (Rt) in Hungarian
* (Hf) in Icelandic
* Private Limited (Pvt. Ltd.) in India
* Public limited company (plc) in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and several Commonwealth countries
* (K.K.) or in Japan
* (J) or in Korea
* in Laos
* (AB) in Lithuanian
* (AS) in Latvian
* (AS) in Norwegian
* , (AO) in Russian
* , (d.d.), or , (a.d.) in Serbian
* Private Limited (Pte. Ltd.) in Singapore
* (a.s.) in Slovak
* (d.d.) in Slovene
* (AB) in Swedish
* , (AT) in Ukrainian
* Publicly traded company or Incorporated (Inc.) in the United States, though the former term does not appear in the names of business entities
* (C.A.) in Andorra
* or (S.A.C.; ) in Cambodia
* in Vietnam
* in Chinese

See also

* Président-directeur général (France)

References

External links

* Global Witness o
Anonymous Companies

{{DEFAULTSORT:S.A. (Corporation)
Types of business entity
Types of companies of France