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 sending in coupons from their share certificate. Dividends were therefore paid to whomever held the share certificates; whoever held the certificate, owned the share. 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. (See also: Bearer bond.) 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.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:21:38 +0000
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