Your French company is running out of cash, the bank will not extend the overdraft, and you live in London, New York or Dubai. Wiring money from your personal account feels like the obvious fix, but in France a shareholder cannot simply push cash into the company and call it capital. A capital increase (augmentation de capital) is a formal legal operation: the shareholders must vote it, the money must be paid into a blocked account with a bank or a notary (notaire) who issues a deposit certificate (certificat du dépositaire), and the whole file must be registered through the INPI single window (Guichet unique, the online portal run by the Institut national de la propriété industrielle where every company filing in France is now lodged) before the clerk of the commercial court (greffe, the registry office attached to each tribunal de commerce) updates the Trade and Companies Register (RCS, registre du commerce et des sociétés) and issues a new Kbis (the official identity card of a French company). Miss one step and the subscriber risks paying twice, the minority shareholder risks being diluted to nothing, and the whole operation risks annulment in court.

This guide explains, for a foreign owner of a French SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited-liability company with rigid statutory majorities), how to inject capital from abroad and how to defend yourself when someone else drives the operation. Part I covers the mechanics of putting money in: cash subscriptions, contributions of assets, and the bank paperwork a non-resident must arrange. Part II covers the defensive side: your preferential right to subscribe first, the majority rules nobody can contract around, and the court actions that undo an irregular increase. Every decisive statement below is anchored to the statute or ruling cited inline, with the operative passage quoted word for word.

I. How a foreign shareholder puts fresh money into the capital of a French SAS or SARL

A. How a cash increase is voted, paid up and certified when the money comes from abroad

A capital increase is never decided by the president (président, the executive of an SAS) or the manager (gérant, the executive of a SARL) alone. In a company governed by the public-company rules that the SAS borrows, “L’assemblée générale extraordinaire est seule compétente pour décider, sur le rapport du conseil d’administration ou du directoire, une augmentation de capital immédiate ou à terme” (article L. 225-129 of the code de commerce). Only the extraordinary general meeting (assemblée générale extraordinaire, usually shortened to AGE, the shareholder meeting called to amend the articles) can vote the increase, on the basis of a report from management. In an SAS, the articles (statuts) decide who votes and how, because the SAS chapter leaves most of the internal organisation to contract; in a SARL, the statute imposes the majority directly, as Part II explains. A foreign sole shareholder is not stuck: the statute expressly provides that a single member exists (“associé unique”) and that “L’associé unique exerce les pouvoirs dévolus aux associés lorsque le présent chapitre prévoit une prise de décision collective” (article L. 227-1 of the code de commerce). If you own 100 percent of a SASU (the one-member SAS) or an EURL (the one-member SARL), you sign the decision yourself, from abroad, and that signature is the AGE.

The same article L. 227-1 recalls the boundary of SAS freedom: “Une société par actions simplifiée peut être instituée par une ou plusieurs personnes qui ne supportent les pertes qu’à concurrence de leur apport” (article L. 227-1 of the code de commerce). Limited liability follows the contribution, which is why the contribution itself is fenced with formalities. Before any new cash shares can be issued, the existing capital must be fully paid up: “Le capital doit être intégralement libéré avant toute émission d’actions nouvelles à libérer en numéraire” (article L. 225-131 of the code de commerce). Libéré means actually paid into the company, not merely promised. A foreign founder who subscribed 10,000 euros at incorporation but only paid 5,000 must release the remaining 5,000 before subscribing to the increase, or the whole issue is vulnerable.

In a SARL, the payment schedule for the new shares is fixed by statute: “Ces parts sont obligatoirement libérées, lors de la souscription, d’un quart au moins de leur valeur nominale. La libération du surplus doit intervenir, en une ou plusieurs fois, dans le délai de cinq ans à compter du jour où l’augmentation du capital est devenue définitive” (article L. 223-32 of the code de commerce). You must pay at least one quarter of the nominal value on the day you subscribe; the balance can be called up over five years. The SAS follows the parallel public-company schedule, with at least one quarter paid at subscription for cash shares and the rest within five years. For a foreign shareholder, the practical point is that only the quarter is needed to close the file, which limits the amount that must transit through the French banking system on day one.

The money must then be deposited, and this is where non-residents stumble. The funds have to be placed with a bank or a notary within eight days of receipt, and the deposit is recorded in a certificat du dépositaire, as the official procedure sheet confirms that the funds released on subscription must be placed with a notary or a bank within eight days of receipt, and that the deposit is recorded in a certificat du dépositaire (service-public.fr, Augmenter le capital social de la société). The same eight-day deposit rule applies to SAS share subscriptions. Plan the wire transfer early: French banks run anti-money-laundering checks on funds arriving from outside France, and a bank that has never seen the company can take weeks to open the blocked “augmentation de capital” sub-account, especially when the order comes from a director who has no French tax number and signs from another time zone. If your usual French bank refuses or stalls, the notary route is the standard fallback: a Paris notary accepts the escrow, issues the certificate, and releases nothing until the greffe has processed the filing. The statute confirms the sequence, since “Le retrait des fonds provenant de souscriptions peut être effectué par un mandataire de la société après l’établissement du certificat du dépositaire” (article L. 223-32 of the code de commerce). Nobody touches the money before the certificate exists.

Once the certificate is issued, the company files the whole dossier on the Guichet unique: the AGE minutes (procès-verbal) recording the increase, the updated articles, the deposit certificate, and the declaration of the new capital. The greffe checks the file, registers the amended capital on the RCS, publishes a notice in the official gazette of civil and commercial announcements (BODACC, Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, where capital changes become opposable to third parties), and issues the updated Kbis. Only then can the company draw the funds. Keep every SWIFT slip, every exchange-rate receipt, and the certificate itself for at least the prescription period: if a creditor later attacks the increase, the paper trail showing that real money left your foreign account and entered the blocked account is the evidence that the subscription was genuine.

One piece of tax procedure favours cash operations. Increases of capital for cash, and increases by capitalisation of profits, reserves or provisions, are carved out of the registration formality: the statute lists among the deeds that must be registered “Les actes constatant la transformation d’une société et ceux constatant l’augmentation de son capital, à l’exception des augmentations de capital en numéraire et par incorporation de bénéfices, de réserves ou de provisions et des augmentations nettes de capital de société à capital variable constatées à la clôture d’un exercice” (article 635 of the code général des impôts). A straight cash injection from abroad therefore skips the tax-office registration step that contributions of buildings or businesses still require. That is one reason lawyers usually route emergency foreign funding as a cash subscription first, and deal with asset transfers separately.

B. How contributing equipment, shares or a business avoids a five-year liability trap

Cash is not the only way to increase capital. A foreign shareholder can contribute assets in kind (apports en nature): machinery, a patent, shares in another company, or a whole business. The regime is stricter, because nothing guarantees the stated value the way a bank certificate guarantees cash. In a public-type company, and therefore in an SAS unless its articles lawfully displace the rule, “En cas d’apports en nature ou de stipulation d’avantages particuliers, un ou plusieurs commissaires aux apports sont désignés à l’unanimité des actionnaires ou, à défaut, par décision de justice” (article L. 225-147 of the code de commerce). The commissaire aux apports is an independent appraiser, usually a statutory auditor, whose job is to say whether the asset is really worth the capital it claims to buy. The statute defines the mission without ambiguity: “Ces commissaires apprécient, sous leur responsabilité, la valeur des apports en nature et les avantages particuliers” (article L. 225-147 of the code de commerce). If the shareholders cannot agree unanimously on the expert, any one of them can ask the court to appoint one, which matters when the foreign owner and the local partner are already in conflict.

The SARL version is nearly identical but carries its own sanction: “Le commissaire aux apports est désigné à l’unanimité des associés ou, à défaut, par une décision de justice à la demande d’un associé ou du gérant” (article L. 223-33 of the code de commerce). And the sanction bites for five years: “Lorsqu’il n’y a pas eu de commissaire aux apports ou lorsque la valeur retenue est différente de celle proposée par le commissaire aux apports, les gérants de la société et les personnes ayant souscrit à l’augmentation du capital sont solidairement responsables pendant cinq ans, à l’égard des tiers, de la valeur attribuée auxdits apports.” Read that slowly if you are the foreign subscriber. Overvalue the patent you contribute, skip the appraiser to save fees, and for five years every creditor of the French company can pursue you personally for the inflated slice. The gérant who signed alongside you is caught too. Foreign founders sometimes assume that living abroad shields them; article L. 223-33 attaches liability to the subscription itself, not to residence.

The Cour de cassation gave this liability its full scope in a case every SAS owner should know. A creditor of a failed SAS sued the two founders personally over allegedly overvalued in-kind contributions, relying on the SAS equivalent of the SARL rule. The court approved the reasoning that “lorsqu’il n’y a pas eu de commissaire aux apports ou lorsque la valeur retenue est différente de celle proposée par le commissaire aux apports, les associés sont solidairement responsables pendant cinq ans, à l’égard des tiers, de la valeur attribuée aux apports en nature lors de la constitution de la société” (Cour de cassation, com., 12 May 2021, n° 20-12.670). The same judgment is a warning about timing: “la loi ne dispose que pour l’avenir ; elle n’a point d’effet rétroactif”, so “la responsabilité extracontractuelle est soumise à la loi en vigueur au jour du fait générateur de responsabilité” (Cour de cassation, com., 12 May 2021, n° 20-12.670). The court applied the liability text in force on the day the company was formed, not the later amended version the court of appeal had used, and quashed the appeal ruling on that ground. For your operation, the lesson is symmetrical: check the version of the statute in force on the day you subscribe, keep the commissaire’s report with the AGE minutes, and never retain a valuation above the expert’s figure without understanding that you are personally underwriting the difference for five years.

Practical checklist for an in-kind increase driven from abroad: first, have the asset valued by a commissaire aux apports appointed unanimously or by the court, and make sure the report is dated before the AGE; second, verify that the AGE resolution adopts a value at or below the expert’s figure, or record in the minutes that the subscribers knowingly accept the five-year joint liability for the gap; third, file the report with the RCS dossier on the Guichet unique, because the greffe expects it and a missing report is the first thing a challenger will point to; fourth, if the asset sits outside France, arrange the transfer documents (assignment of the patent, delivery of the equipment, share transfer in the foreign register) so that the contribution is effective, not merely declared. An asset the company cannot actually use is an invitation to a nullity suit.

II. How a foreign shareholder avoids being diluted or overruled during the increase

A. How your preferential right to subscribe first works, and when preference shares need your personal consent

The greatest fear of a foreign minority shareholder is dilution: the majority votes an increase, reserves it to itself, and your 40 percent becomes 4 percent. French law answers with the preferential subscription right (droit préférentiel de souscription, universally shortened to DPS). The principle is short: “Les actions comportent un droit préférentiel de souscription aux augmentations de capital. Les actionnaires ont, proportionnellement au montant de leurs actions, un droit de préférence à la souscription des actions de numéraire émises pour réaliser une augmentation de capital” (article L. 225-132 of the code de commerce). Every shareholder subscribes first, in proportion to what they already hold. The right can also be sold or waived: “Les actionnaires peuvent renoncer à titre individuel à leur droit préférentiel” (article L. 225-132 of the code de commerce). But the waiver must be individual and informed. Silence, absence from the meeting, or living abroad is not a waiver. If you hold 40 percent and the company issues 1,000 new shares for cash, 400 are yours to take before anyone else touches them.

The meeting can remove the DPS, but only by saying so expressly. “peut supprimer le droit préférentiel de souscription pour la totalité de l’augmentation de capital ou pour une ou plusieurs tranches de cette augmentation” (article L. 225-135 of the code de commerce). In practice this means a dedicated resolution, a management report explaining the removal, and, depending on the route chosen, a special report from the statutory auditor. A foreign shareholder who receives a convocation (meeting notice) from Paris should read the draft resolutions line by line: a reserved increase (augmentation réservée, an increase whose beneficiaries are named in advance) buried in a long agenda is the classic instrument for squeezing out the absent partner. Vote against, have your opposition recorded in the minutes, and instruct a Paris lawyer to attend if you cannot fly in. An unrecorded protest is worth little once the minutes state unanimity.

Holders of preference shares (actions de préférence, shares with special financial or voting rights, often issued to foreign investors as downside protection) enjoy an extra lock. When the articles do not organise how the attached rights can be changed, the company must obtain each holder’s personal agreement. The Cour de cassation stated the rule bluntly: “lorsque les statuts d’une société par actions simplifiée ne prévoient pas les modalités selon lesquelles les droits attachés aux actions de préférence peuvent être modifiés, le consentement individuel des titulaires de ces actions est requis pour procéder à une telle modification” (Cour de cassation, com., 10 July 2024, n° 22-15.836). In that case, an SAS had cut the priority dividend attached to P preference shares from 8 percent of the subscription price to 3 percent by an AGE vote, and the court quashed the appeal judgment that had validated the cut, holding that the appeal court had “violé” the contract-law text by dispensing with individual consent. If you negotiated a priority dividend or a liquidation preference when you invested, verify before every AGE whether any resolution touches those rights; a majority vote alone cannot take them away while the articles are silent.

From abroad, defending the DPS is an information battle. Demand the full pre-meeting file (reports, draft resolutions, auditor’s special report where required) within the statutory communication period. Exercise the DPS in writing before the subscription period closes, pay the subscription price within the deadline, and keep proof of the transfer. If the DPS was suppressed without the proper reports and resolutions, do not subscribe “under protest” in a way that could later be read as acceptance; subscribe expressly “without waiver of the nullity claim” (sans renonciation à l’action en nullité) and file the challenge promptly, because short limitation periods govern capital operations, as the next section shows.

B. How a wrong majority or a rigged procedure gets the increase annulled, and what it costs

In a SARL, nobody can lower the voting threshold by contract. The statute sets the floor and punishes breach with nullity. The baseline rule: “Toutes autres modifications des statuts sont décidées par les associés représentant au moins les trois quarts des parts sociales” (article L. 223-30 of the code de commerce). For companies formed after the 2005 SME statute, the quorum-and-majority ladder is lighter but still mandatory: on first call at least one quarter of the shares must be present or represented, on second call one fifth, and “les modifications sont décidées à la majorité des deux tiers des parts détenues par les associés présents ou représentés” (article L. 223-30 of the code de commerce). And the sanction is now written into the article itself: “Les décisions prises en violation des dispositions du présent article peuvent être annulées à la demande de tout intéressé” (article L. 223-30 of the code de commerce). Any interested person, including the diluted foreign minority holder, can ask the court to annul.

The Cour de cassation applied these words without mercy in November 2025. A SARL formed in 2007 had articles allowing capital increases by holders of “at least half” of the shares; an AGE had voted a cash increase at 60 percent, against the vote of the 40-percent holder, who sued for nullity. The court recalled that “pour les sociétés à responsabilité limitée constituées après la publication de la loi n° 2005-882 du 2 août 2005 en faveur des petites et moyennes entreprises, les modifications statutaires autres que le changement de nationalité sont décidées à la majorité des deux tiers des parts détenues, les statuts pouvant prévoir une majorité plus élevée sans pouvoir exiger l’unanimité des associés” (Cour de cassation, com., 5 November 2025, n° 23-10.763). It then approved the appeal court for holding “que l’article 8 des statuts de la société, prévoyant la possibilité de réduire ou d’augmenter le capital social par une décision des associés représentant au moins la moitié des parts sociales, viole l’article L. 223-30, et que la résolution litigieuse adoptée par une majorité représentant 60 % des parts, soit trois-cinquièmes, était intervenue en méconnaissance des dispositions impératives de ce texte.” A statutory clause that lowers the bar is itself unlawful, and the 60-percent resolution fell with it, including the majority holder’s subscription performed under it. If your SARL articles promise that “half is enough”, that clause is worthless, and an increase voted on its basis can be wiped out years later, with the subscriber refunded and the capital restored.

In an SAS, the articles set the majority, so the fight moves to procedure: proper convocation of every shareholder, complete pre-meeting information, a specific resolution for any DPS suppression with the required reports, appointment of the commissaire aux apports for in-kind tranches, deposit of the funds, and filing on the Guichet unique. Each missing brick supports a nullity claim, but the claim must be brought fast. Nullity actions for capital operations obey short, specific limitation periods, and the subscription, the deposit and the RCS registration each start clocks running. A foreign shareholder who learns of a Paris AGE three months late must therefore move immediately: have a lawyer pull the Kbis, the BODACC notice and the filed minutes from the greffe, identify the exact defect (wrong majority, missing report, DPS suppressed without a dedicated resolution, overvalued contribution without an appraiser), and assign (assigner, serve a court summons) before the window closes.

Annulment restores the prior capital, cancels the irregularly issued shares, and forces the company to repay the irregular subscribers with interest, while the directors who organised the vote face damages claims and, in a SARL, the five-year joint liability of article L. 223-33 for in-kind overvaluation. The price of winning is real too: court fees, an expert appraisal if valuation is disputed, and months during which the company’s Kbis carries a capital figure that everyone knows is contested, which freezes bank lending. That is why prevention costs less than cure. Before wiring a single euro, ask for the draft AGE minutes, check the majority against the statute rather than the articles, confirm the DPS treatment in a dedicated resolution, and condition your transfer on delivery of the deposit certificate. After the operation, verify the new Kbis within days: the capital figure, the number of shares and your percentage must match the vote, and any mismatch goes back to the président or gérant by registered letter the same week.

Conclusion

A cash increase from abroad succeeds when the vote, the money and the filing line up: an AGE that alone can decide under article L. 225-129, existing capital fully paid up as article L. 225-131 requires, at least one quarter paid at subscription with the balance due within five years under article L. 223-32, funds deposited within eight days against a certificat du dépositaire, and registration through the Guichet unique to the RCS, the BODACC and a fresh Kbis. Cash subscriptions skip the tax registration formality by the express exception of article 635 of the code général des impôts. An in-kind increase adds the appraiser: a commissaire aux apports appointed unanimously or by the court under article L. 225-147 or article L. 223-33, whose valuation binds the subscribers on pain of five years of joint liability toward creditors, a liability the Cour de cassation enforced to the letter in n° 20-12.670 of 12 May 2021. On the defensive side, the DPS of article L. 225-132 guarantees every shareholder the first call on new cash shares, removable only by the express meeting decision of article L. 225-135; preference-share rights cannot be rewritten without each holder’s individual consent while the articles are silent, as n° 22-15.836 of 10 July 2024 holds; and in a SARL no clause can push the increase majority below the statutory two-thirds, with nullity open to any interested person, as n° 23-10.763 of 5 November 2025 confirms by striking down a 60-percent vote. Whether you are wiring the money in or fighting an operation voted behind your back, the method from abroad is the same: read the draft resolutions before the meeting, pay only against the deposit certificate, check the new Kbis within days, and challenge fast, because capital litigation rewards the shareholder who acts in weeks, not the one who discovers the dilution at the next accounts meeting. Our guides to funding an SAS or SARL by shareholder loan, bringing dividends home and selling your shares sit alongside this one for the rest of the financing cycle.

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