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The abbreviation S.A.orSA, for the French société anonyme[a] designates a type of limited company in certain countries, most of which have a Romance language as their official language and operates a derivative of the 1804, Napoleonic, civil law.[1] Originally, shareholders could be anonymous and collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates. Dividends were paid to whomever held the certificate. Since share certificates could be transferred privately, corporate management would not necessarily know who owned its shares – nor did anyone but the holders.
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 to obscure the beneficiary.
S.A. can be an abbreviation of:
It is equivalent in literal meaning and function to:
It is equivalent in function to:
(v)Multilingual countries. Different linguistic renderings of the name of an entity listed in paragraph (b)(8)(i) of this section shall be disregarded. For example, an entity formed under the laws of Switzerland as a Societe Anonyme will be a corporation and treated in the same manner as an Aktiengesellschaft.
