The envelope is not a bank KYC request. It is an assignation (a formal summons) from the mandataire liquidateur — the court-appointed liquidator — of your French SAS (société par actions simplifiée, a simplified joint-stock company) or SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, a limited-liability company). You are not on the Kbis, the official extract of the RCS (registre du commerce et des sociétés, France’s companies register kept by the greffe, the commercial court’s registry). The claim is that the foreign parent, or its chief executive in London, Dubai or Delaware, was the dirigeant de fait: the de facto director who actually ran the company.

That status does not appear on any INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle) form. Article L. 651-2 of the Commercial Code lets the court, when a judicial liquidation shows an insuffisance d’actif (a shortfall of assets), order that shortfall to be borne “par tous les dirigeants de droit ou de fait, ou par certains d’entre eux, ayant contribué à la faute de gestion.” The same people may face faillite personnelle under article L. 653-1. German vehicles were treated as de facto directors of a French SAS in Cour de cassation, Commercial Chamber, 13 December 2023, n° 21-14.579, published in the Bulletin. A Swiss corporate president produced another Bulletin decision in 20 November 2024, n° 23-17.842. De facto direction is the claim that reaches the parent even when the Kbis is clean, next to the formation file and the duty to file a cessation of payments.

I. When does a foreign parent become the de facto director of a French SAS or SARL

A. Which emails, bank powers and group instructions actually make a dirigeant de fait

French law does not define the de facto director in a single code article the way it defines the président of an SAS or the gérant of an SARL. The Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation does. In 26 March 2025, n° 24-11.190, it stated, word for word: “Le dirigeant de fait est celui qui exerce en toute indépendance une activité positive de gestion et de direction de la personne morale.” The de facto director is the person who exercises, in complete independence, a positive activity of management and direction of the legal person.

Two elements must both be present. First, a positive activity: acts of management, not mere influence, not family pressure, not being copied on emails. Second, independence: the person must have acted as if the legal office belonged to them, not as an employee executing a French director’s instructions, and not as a shareholder exercising the rights that the bylaws and the Commercial Code already give to an associé or an actionnaire. In 24-11.190 the Court of Appeal of Saint-Denis had inferred de facto management from a “emprise certaine” on the legal manager, a family link, a difference of age, professional experience, charisma, and the statement that the nephew-manager had been “coaché”. The Cour de cassation quashed. Paragraph 6 of the judgment is the working test for a foreign parent: “sans relever d’actes positifs précis de nature à caractériser l’immixtion de M. [D] dans la gestion et la direction de la société, que ce dernier aurait accomplis en toute indépendance, en excédant ses fonctions de directeur commercial, la cour d’appel n’a pas donné de base légale à sa décision.” Influence is not enough. Precise positive acts, performed independently, are.

What those acts look like in a group file is painfully ordinary. A parent treasury officer who is a signatory on the French bank mandate and who decides which supplier is paid this week. A foreign chief executive who hires and dismisses the French sales staff, or who signs the French employment contracts “for the group”. A weekly call in which the French président does not decide prices, leases or litigation strategy, but takes them from the parent and implements them. Emails in which French employees write to the parent for leave, for a laptop, for authority to grant a discount, and never write to the person named on the Kbis. Use of the subsidiary’s staff or premises to develop another group company, which is exactly the pattern the employees described in 24-11.190 and which, had it been tied to precise independent acts, would have been relevant. A parent that treats the French company’s cash as its own current account without a documented shareholder loan is not only creating a tax file; it is feeding the liquidator’s exhibit list.

What does not, by itself, make a de facto director is equally important, because it is the ordinary life of a foreign-owned subsidiary. The parent votes at the annual general meeting. The parent appoints and revokes the président or gérant under the bylaws. The parent receives monthly reporting packs. The parent approves a group budget. The parent invoices genuine management services under a written agreement, at a documented cost, for work actually performed — a file that is already a tax battleground and that must stay on the shareholder side of the line. The parent’s lawyers or accountants give advice. A director of the parent sits on a supervisory committee that does not have executive power. Group compliance policies, a code of conduct, a shared IT system: none of these is a positive independent act of direction of the French company, unless the policy is the vehicle through which the parent actually runs hiring, banking and contracting in place of the legal director.

The Court of Appeal of Paris, Pôle 5, Chamber 9, 17 November 2022, n° 22/02604, restated the same two-part test before applying it to a commercial director who was “omniprésent”: “La jurisprudence a défini la notion de dirigeant de fait comme celui qui, en toute souveraineté et indépendance, exerce une activité positive de gestion et de direction.” Sovereignty and independence are the words that save a parent which reports, and that condemn a parent which decides. The liquidator will build a bundle of emails, bank powers, WhatsApp messages, lease negotiations and staff instructions. The defence is not a general denial of “involvement”. It is a demonstration that each act either belonged to the legal director, or was a shareholder decision that French company law already attributes to the general meeting, or was a service provided to the legal director rather than in his place.

A last distinction must be kept clean, because litigators mix the labels. De facto direction is not the same thing as confusion des patrimoines (commingling of assets) or fictivité (a sham company). Article L. 621-2 of the Commercial Code allows the insolvency proceedings opened against the French company to be extended to another person “en cas de confusion de leur patrimoine avec celui du débiteur ou de fictivité de la personne morale.” That action swallows the parent’s own estate into the French insolvency. The de facto-director action under article L. 651-2 leaves the parent as a separate person and asks it to pay a sum corresponding to the shortfall. A liquidator who cannot prove commingling will often fall back on de facto management. The exhibits overlap — mixed bank accounts, unpaid intra-group invoices, staff working for both entities — but the legal tests do not. Contesting one is not contesting the other.

B. How a corporate président, a représentant permanent and a parent CEO are treated differently

The corporate form of the French company changes who can be a director of right, and therefore who is exposed as a director of fact. An SAS is represented toward third parties by a président. Article L. 227-6 of the Commercial Code provides: “La société est représentée à l’égard des tiers par un président désigné dans les conditions prévues par les statuts.” That president may be a legal person, including the foreign parent itself. When a legal person is appointed president or director of an SAS, article L. 227-7 is blunt: “les dirigeants de ladite personne morale sont soumis aux mêmes conditions et obligations et encourent les mêmes responsabilités civile et pénale que s’ils étaient président ou dirigeant en leur nom propre, sans préjudice de la responsabilité solidaire de la personne morale qu’ils dirigent.” The directors of the parent, in their own names, incur the same civil and criminal liabilities as if they were president of the French SAS, and the parent remains jointly liable.

That is the default. It can be organised. In an SA (société anonyme, a public limited company), a legal person appointed as director must designate a représentant permanent (permanent representative). Article L. 225-20 of the Commercial Code states: “Lors de sa nomination, elle est tenue de désigner un représentant permanent qui est soumis aux mêmes conditions et obligations et qui encourt les mêmes responsabilités civile et pénale que s’il était administrateur en son nom propre, sans préjudice de la responsabilité solidaire de la personne morale qu’il représente.” For an SAS, that designation is not imposed by statute. It exists only if the bylaws say so.

The Cour de cassation drew the operational consequence in the Swiss-parent case of 20 November 2024, n° 23-17.842, published in the Bulletin. Med Clean SA, a Swiss company, was president of Med Clean France, an SAS. The liquidator sued Mr U., a director of the Swiss company, for the asset shortfall. The Court of Appeal of Lyon had applied article L. 227-7 as if every director of the Swiss president were automatically a director of right of the French SAS. The Cour de cassation quashed. Paragraph 10 holds: “Lorsqu’une société par actions simplifiée est dirigée par une personne morale qui a désigné un représentant permanent conformément aux statuts de cette société, la personne physique dirigeant cette personne morale ne peut voir sa responsabilité pour insuffisance d’actif engagée si elle n’a pas également la qualité de représentant permanent.” If the SAS bylaws appoint a permanent representative of the corporate president, the other directors of the foreign parent are not directors of right of the French company for the purposes of article L. 651-2. They can still be pursued as de facto directors if they independently ran the subsidiary. They cannot be pursued merely because they sit on the parent’s board.

The opposite configuration is the German-parent case of 13 December 2023, n° 21-14.579, also published in the Bulletin. Parter Capital Group GmbH and F4 Holding GmbH were found to be de facto directors of SAS Thomson Broadcast. Mr Y., who directed those German companies, argued that his personal liability could not be sought. The Cour de cassation rejected the appeal. Paragraph 11, which every foreign group with a French SAS should read before the first Kbis is issued, states that “lorsque la personne morale mise en liquidation judiciaire est une SAS dirigée de fait par une personne morale, la responsabilité pour insuffisance d’actif, prévue par le troisième texte précité, est encourue non seulement par cette personne morale, mais aussi par le représentant légal de cette dernière, en l’absence d’obligation légale ou statutaire de désigner un représentant permanent de la personne morale dirigeant au sein d’une SAS.” No statutory or bylaw permanent representative, and a finding of de facto direction by the parent, means the parent’s own legal representative is in the case. Paragraph 13 adds that the management fault may be characterised “indifféremment à l’égard de celui-ci ou à l’égard de son représentant légal.”

An SARL is stricter at the front door and more dangerous at the back. Article L. 223-18 of the Commercial Code opens with: “La société à responsabilité limitée est gérée par une ou plusieurs personnes physiques.” A legal person cannot be gérant of an SARL. The foreign parent therefore cannot appear on the Kbis as manager. If the parent nevertheless runs the SARL — signs the banks, decides the contracts, gives orders to staff — it can only do so as a de facto director. There is no “we were the corporate gérant” defence, because that office does not exist. The criminal overlay is express. Article L. 241-9 extends the SARL criminal provisions “à toute personne qui, directement ou par personne interposée, aura, en fait, exercé la gestion d’une société à responsabilité limitée sous le couvert ou au lieu et place de son gérant légal.” For an SAS, article L. 244-4 does the same “sous le couvert ou au lieu et place du président et des dirigeants de cette société.” For an SA or a European company, article L. 246-2 extends the catalogue of offences to any person who has in fact exercised direction, administration or management “sous le couvert ou au lieu et place de leurs représentants légaux.”

Choosing the vehicle is therefore not only a social-security and bank-file question, which is already mapped in the SAS or SARL comparison. It is a liability map. An SAS can make the parent the president of right, name a permanent representative in the bylaws, and confine article L. 227-7 to that named individual. An SARL cannot put the parent on the Kbis; every operational intervention by the parent is then a candidate for article L. 241-9 and for article L. 651-2. Revoking a tired president from abroad, which is a separate INPI filing, does not cleanse the period during which the parent actually ran the company. The liquidator looks at the months before the opening judgment, not at the Kbis on the day of the hearing.

II. How to contest an insuffisance d’actif claim or a personal bankruptcy from abroad

A. Who can sue, which court has jurisdiction and which three-year deadline applies

The asset-shortfall action is not open to every unpaid supplier. Article L. 651-3 of the Commercial Code provides: “Dans les cas prévus à l’article L. 651-2 , le tribunal est saisi par le liquidateur ou le ministère public.” The court is seised by the liquidator or by the public prosecutor. In the collective interest of creditors, the majority of the creditors appointed as contrôleurs may also seise the court if the liquidator, after a formal notice, has not brought the action. Ordinary creditors do not have a private L. 651-2 claim. They may have other claims — a contractual claim against a guarantor, a claim on a patronage letter, a tort claim under article 1240 of the Civil Code (“Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer”) — but those are different actions, with different claimants and different proof.

The persons in the net are defined by article L. 651-1: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre sont applicables aux dirigeants d’une personne morale de droit privé soumise à une procédure collective, ainsi qu’aux personnes physiques représentants permanents de ces dirigeants personnes morales, aux entrepreneurs individuels à responsabilité limitée et aux entrepreneurs individuels relevant du statut défini à la section 3 du chapitre VI du titre II du livre V.” Directors of a private-law legal person in insolvency, and the natural persons who are permanent representatives of corporate directors. Article L. 651-2 then adds the de facto directors. The action “se prescrit par trois ans à compter du jugement qui prononce la liquidation judiciaire.” Three years from the judgment that pronounces the judicial liquidation, not from the opening of a recovery procedure, and not from the first unpaid invoice. A foreign parent that receives a letter from the liquidator two years and eleven months after the liquidation judgment is still inside the limitation period.

The merits are not “you were involved.” They are a management fault that contributed to the shortfall, and not mere negligence. Article L. 651-2 continues: “Toutefois, en cas de simple négligence du dirigeant de droit ou de fait dans la gestion de la personne morale, sa responsabilité au titre de l’insuffisance d’actif ne peut être engagée.” Simple negligence of the de jure or de facto director cannot ground the action. Late bookkeeping, an optimistic forecast, a failed commercial bet, are not enough. The liquidator must identify a fault — continuing a doomed activity, stripping assets, mixing accounts, failing to file the cessation of payments when the legal director was in a position to do so, using the company for another group entity — and a contribution to the insufficiency. Several directors may be held jointly liable, but only by a reasoned decision.

Jurisdiction follows the commercial nature of the claim, not the employment contract the parent’s executive may also hold. In Cour de cassation, Commercial Chamber, 30 March 2022, n° 20-11.776, published in the Bulletin, the Court recalled “à bon droit que les tribunaux de commerce sont compétents pour connaître des actions en responsabilité engagées par des sociétés commerciales contre leurs dirigeants de fait” Commercial courts hear liability actions brought by commercial companies against their de facto directors. Whether the defendant was in fact a de facto director is the merits, not a bar to the commercial court’s jurisdiction. A foreign executive who answers “I was only an employee of the parent” will not move the case to the labour court. Article L. 621-2 adds that the court which opened the insolvency remains competent for an extension of proceedings. For a Paris SAS, that is the Paris commercial court; for a company registered in Hauts-de-Seine, it is the court of Nanterre. Service on a defendant abroad does not change the court. Ignoring the summons because it arrived in English translation at a foreign registered office is how default judgments are made.

Personal bankruptcy and the ban on acquiring assets travel with the same characterisation. Article L. 653-1 applies the chapter on personal bankruptcy “Aux personnes physiques, dirigeants de droit ou de fait de personnes morales” and to permanent representatives, with a three-year limitation from the opening judgment, except that the action linked to an L. 651-2 decision runs from the day that decision becomes final. Article L. 653-4 lists the facts that can trigger faillite personnelle of a de jure or de facto director, including: “Avoir disposé des biens de la personne morale comme des siens propres”; using the company’s goods or credit contrary to its interest to favour another company in which the director was interested; and abusively continuing a loss-making activity. Article L. 642-3 then shuts the door on a buy-back: “Ni le débiteur, au titre de l’un quelconque de ses patrimoines, ni les dirigeants de droit ou de fait de la personne morale en liquidation judiciaire, ni les parents ou alliés jusqu’au deuxième degré inclusivement de ces dirigeants ou du débiteur personne physique, ni les personnes ayant ou ayant eu la qualité de contrôleur au cours de la procédure ne sont admis, directement ou par personne interposée, à présenter une offre.” The Cour de cassation confirmed, in 8 January 2020, n° 18-20.270, published in the Bulletin, that “le dirigeant de fait de la personne morale débitrice mise en liquidation judiciaire ne peut acquérir les biens de celle-ci” A parent that hopes to repurchase the French business through a Newco after the liquidation must first win the characterisation battle, or obtain the tightly framed judicial authorisation that article L. 642-3 itself reserves.

The defence file from abroad is a documentary file, not a speech. Recover the bank mandate: who was a signatory, from which date, with which ceiling. Recover the employment and contractor file: who signed the CDI (contrat à durée indéterminée, an open-ended employment contract) and the DPAE (déclaration préalable à l’embauche, the prior hiring declaration to URSSAF, the social-security collection body). Recover the email boxes of the French président and of the parent officers who dealt with France, with a date range covering the suspected period. Recover the intra-group agreements, the board minutes of the parent, and the minutes of the French general meetings. Recover the Kbis history, not only the current extract. If the parent was never president of an SAS, say so and prove it. If the bylaws named a permanent representative, produce the bylaws and the Kbis mention. If the French director actually decided, produce the decisions. Sworn translations will be required for foreign corporate documents, as they are for any INPI or greffe filing. A French lawyer will need a power of attorney. The first hearing is not the moment to discover that the parent’s only evidence is a group organisation chart drawn after the summons.

B. What Paris and Île-de-France files look like and how to ring-fence the parent without freezing the subsidiary

Most English-speaking groups that keep a French trading company place the registered office in Paris or in the inner suburbs: the 8th and 9th arrondissements, Neuilly, Levallois, La Défense, sometimes Saint-Denis or Boulogne. The insolvency court is the commercial court of the registered office. Paris files are heard by the Tribunal de commerce de Paris. Hauts-de-Seine files, which include La Défense holdings, go to Nanterre. Appeals in Paris commercial matters sit in the Court of Appeal of Paris, Pôle 5, whose chambers 8, 9 and 10 recur in the de facto-director case law. Versailles hears Hauts-de-Seine appeals. The liquidator appointed in a Paris liquidation is used to group files: shared premises in a coworking space, a parent IBAN that paid the French rent, a président who lives abroad and a local employee who “ran the shop.” Those facts are common. They are not, taken separately, a finding of de facto direction. Bundled, dated, and tied to independent decisions, they are.

What a Paris or Nanterre chamber actually reads, in practice, is the bank file and the mailbox. A foreign parent that insisted, during the account opening, on remaining a signatory “until the local director is in place” and then never removed itself has written the first page of the liquidator’s submissions. A parent that required every lease, every hire above a modest threshold, and every litigation settlement to be approved in London or Dubai has written the second. A parent that left the French director without a bank card, without access to the accounting software, and without authority to speak to the URSSAF or to the tax office (service des impôts des entreprises) has emptied the legal office of its content. The 2025 judgment in 24-11.190 does not forbid group supervision. It forbids the court of appeal to skip the precise acts. The parent’s task is to make sure those precise acts, if they exist, belong to the person on the Kbis.

Ring-fencing is therefore a governance job, not a press release. Appoint a French or at least an operational président or gérant who actually holds the bank mandate, signs the contracts, and chairs the staff. Put the limits of that mandate in the bylaws and in an internal matrix, and respect the matrix: a parent veto reserved to the general meeting (appointment, accounts, sale of the business, amendment of the objet social) is a shareholder right; a parent veto on Tuesday’s supplier payment is de facto management. If the parent is president of an SAS, write a permanent representative into the bylaws, file it on the Kbis, and stop treating every director of the parent as a shadow officer of the French company — that is the lesson of 23-17.842. Keep intra-group cash as loans or current accounts with dates, rates and repayments, not as a drawer the parent opens. Keep management fees as invoiced services, not as a right to give orders. Do not let the parent occupy the French premises without a contract. Do not let the French company pay the parent’s debts. Do not use the French company’s goods “comme des siens propres,” in the words of article L. 653-4.

When the summons has already arrived, the ring-fence is a defence timeline. Check the date of the liquidation judgment and the three-year count under article L. 651-2. Check who is named: the parent company, a named executive, a former permanent representative, or all three. Check whether the liquidator is also seeking an extension under article L. 621-2, a personal bankruptcy under article L. 653-4, or only a sum of money. Appear. A foreign defendant who does not instruct counsel will be judged on the liquidator’s bundle. Contest the characterisation first, with the 2025 test: no precise independent positive acts. Contest the fault second: even a de facto director is not liable for simple negligence. Contest the contribution third: the shortfall may have other causes (a market, a pandemic, a customer insolvency, a tax reassessment) that the liquidator has not linked to the parent’s conduct. Contest the quantum last. Settlement with the liquidator is often available on quantum once characterisation is seriously disputed; it is rarely available if the parent has ignored the case.

Paris and Île-de-France add a practical layer that groups underestimate. The commercial court will not wait for a foreign apostille that takes eight weeks if the hearing is in six. Start the sworn translations and the corporate certificates of the parent on the day the summons is read. If the parent must deliberate, under its own law, before it can instruct French counsel or offer a settlement, that deliberation should be minuted now, not after a default. BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official bulletin in which insolvency judgments are published) will already have published the opening of the French proceedings; counterparties in France know. The bank may freeze the account. That freeze is not a judgment on de facto direction, but it is a reason not to let the French company drift without a legal director who can still speak to the greffe, to the URSSAF and to the court.

None of this requires the parent to abandon control of its investment. French company law gives the shareholder the appointment of directors, the approval of accounts, the amendment of bylaws, and, in an SAS, a contractual freedom that can be written into a shareholders’ agreement without turning the parent into a day-to-day manager. The line the Cour de cassation drew in 2025, 2024 and 2023 is the line between the owner who decides who manages, and the owner who manages. Foreign groups that keep that line can still receive monthly packs, still approve annual budgets, still second a finance controller, still invoice services. Foreign groups that erase that line discover it again in an assignation, when the Kbis no longer protects them.

Conclusion

A clean Kbis does not mean a clean liability map. French law looks through the extract to the person who, independently, performed positive acts of management and direction. The Commercial Chamber said so in one sentence in 2025: the de facto director is the one who exercises that activity “en toute indépendance.” Influence, coaching, family authority and being copied on emails do not meet the test. Signing the French bank, hiring the French staff, deciding the French payments and occupying the legal director’s chair do.

For a foreign parent the corporate form then distributes the risk. An SAS may appoint the parent as president and, if the bylaws so provide, a permanent representative who concentrates article L. 227-7. Without that representative, 21-14.579 puts the parent’s own legal representative into the asset-shortfall case once the parent is found to have directed the SAS in fact. An SARL cannot appoint the parent as gérant at all; every operational takeover is then a de facto-director file, with a criminal extension under article L. 241-9. The action itself is time-limited: three years from the liquidation judgment, brought by the liquidator or the public prosecutor, before the commercial court, and it cannot rest on simple negligence.

The working response, before any summons, is to put a real director in the French office, a real bank mandate in that director’s name, a permanent representative in the SAS bylaws if the parent sits as president, and a paper trail that shows shareholder supervision rather than substitute management. The working response after a summons is to appear, to apply the 2025 test to each alleged act, to separate de facto direction from commingling under article L. 621-2, and to attack fault, contribution and quantum in that order. The parent that treats the French subsidiary as a branch with a local letterhead has already written the liquidator’s brief. The parent that treats it as a company, with a director who directs, still has a defence.