The abbreviation S.A. or SA designates a type of public limited company in certain countries, most of which have a Romance language as their official language and operate a derivative of the 1804, Napoleonic, civil law. Originally, shareholders could be anonymous and collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates. Dividends were paid to whoever 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.
Variations
Abbreviation
S.A. can be an abbreviation of:
- in Galician and European Portuguese (used in Portugal, Timor Leste, Macao, and Lusophone Africa)
- Equivalent as in Chinese for Macau
- in Brazilian Portuguese (used in Brazil)
- in Asturian and Leonese
- in Catalan
- 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 ), Luxembourg (also identifiable in Luxembourgish as ), Switzerland (where it is equivalent to an or a ), as well as Haiti, Lebanon, and such African countries as Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Algeria)
- 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.
- ("Joint-stock company") in Polish
- in Romanian
"SA" has been incorporated into the names of some companies derived from acronyms, such as Cepsa, originally , "Spanish petroleum company, S.A.", and Sabena, originally , "Belgian S.A. of exploitation of air navigation".
Literal meaning
It is equivalent in literal meaning and function to:
- (, A.E.) in Greek is usually translated into S.A. in English and foreign languages.
Function
It is equivalent in function to:
- in Albanian
- , () in Arabic
- (d.d.) in Croatian and Bosnian
- , (ÃÂÃÂ) in Bulgarian
- , (ÃÂÃÂ) in Macedonian
- (a.s.) in Czech
- (A/S) in Danish
- (S.A.E.) or (, , abbreviated ) in Egypt
- (Oyj) in Finnish
- (AS) in Estonian
- (AG) in German
- (Rt) in Hungarian
- (Hf) in Icelandic
- Private Limited (Pvt. Ltd.) in India and Pakistan
- Public limited company (plc) in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, and several Commonwealth countries
- (K.K.) or in Japan
- (J) or in Korea
- in Laos
- (AB) in Lithuanian
- (AS) in Latvian
- (AS) in Norwegian
- (SA) ("Joint-stock company") in Polish
- , (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
- Incorporated in the Philippines (formerly used Spanish S.A., corporate structures were Americanized during the US colonial period)
- , (AT) in Ukrainian
- Publicly traded company ("public 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
References
External links