You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your French business was supposed to run itself. Eighteen months ago you formed a SAS (société par actions simplifiée — the flexible French simplified joint-stock company) with a French partner who promised local clients, local hiring and local paperwork. You hold fifty percent, he holds fifty percent, he is président (the legal chief executive of a SAS), and the company has a Kbis extract (the official registration certificate issued by the greffe — the clerk’s office of the commercial court — proving the company legally exists). Then the relationship breaks down. He stops calling general meetings, signs a supplier contract you never approved, refuses the capital increase the company needs, or blocks the sale of your shares to the buyer you found. From abroad, you discover that every decision requires his signature, the bank only answers to him, and your emails go unanswered for weeks. This is the classic French deadlock — in French, mésentente paralysant le fonctionnement de la société, a disagreement between shareholders that paralyses the company — and French company law has a complete toolkit for it: forced buyout clauses you can still activate, court actions to cancel abusive votes, the right to sell and walk away, and, as a last resort, a court-ordered early dissolution of the company. This guide explains each route in the order a foreign shareholder should try them, what must be filed with the greffe and published in the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales — the official gazette where company events are published), and how to run the whole dispute from abroad through French counsel. Our companion hub for foreign founders, covering bank account, Kbis extract, VAT and first hires, is Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder.
I. Your French Partner Is Blocking the Company: Forcing a Buyout and Cancelling Abusive Decisions From Abroad
The first reflex of a blocked foreign shareholder is often to sue for dissolution straight away. That is usually a mistake. French courts treat dissolution as a remedy of last resort, and a judge will ask what you did first: did your statutes provide an exit, did you try to buy the blocker out, did you challenge the specific abusive decision? The answers decide both the outcome and who pays the costs. So the disciplined path starts inside the company — with the exclusion, approval and voting clauses of your SAS statutes — and moves to targeted court challenges against individual decisions, keeping dissolution in reserve. Everything in this first part can be launched while you remain abroad: French counsel acts under a signed power of attorney, filings go through the INPI single window (the Guichet unique run by the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the one-stop online portal for company formalities), and hearings before the tribunal de commerce (the commercial court) or the tribunal judiciaire (the general civil court) do not require your physical presence when you are represented by an avocat (a lawyer admitted to a French bar).
A. How to Force Your Blocking Partner to Sell His Shares Under Your SAS Statutes
The SAS is the vehicle of choice for Franco-foreign joint ventures precisely because its statutes can organise almost anything the shareholders agree, and the exclusion clause is the most powerful weapon against a blocking partner. Article L. 227-16 of the Commercial Code provides: “Dans les conditions qu’ils déterminent, les statuts peuvent prévoir qu’un associé peut être tenu de céder ses actions. Ils peuvent également prévoir la suspension des droits non pécuniaires de cet associé tant que celui-ci n’a pas procédé à cette cession.” In plain English: if your statutes contain an exclusion clause, the company can force the disruptive shareholder to sell his shares, and can suspend his voting rights until he does. Triggering events are freely defined — loss of confidence, breach of a shareholders’ agreement, competing activity, persistent refusal to vote the necessary resolutions, change of control of a corporate shareholder — and the clause designates who buys (the company itself, the remaining shareholders, or an approved third party) and how the price is set. Before doing anything else, have counsel read your statutes and any separate pacte d’associés (shareholders’ agreement) line by line: the exclusion procedure, its notice periods, the competent decision-making body and the price formula are binding, and a single procedural error can invalidate the whole operation.
Three companion clauses usually frame the exclusion and must be checked together. First, the approval clause: article L. 227-14 of the Commercial Code states: “Les statuts peuvent soumettre toute cession d’actions à l’agrément préalable de la société.” Any buyer of the excluded partner’s shares — including you — may therefore need the company’s prior approval, and the statutes organise that vote. Second, the nullity sanction: article L. 227-15 of the Commercial Code states: “Toute cession effectuée en violation des clauses statutaires est nulle.” This is the clause that kills off-market side deals: if your partner tries to sell his shares to a friend in breach of the approval or pre-emption clause, you can have that sale annulled. But beware its exact boundary, fixed by the Cour de cassation (France’s supreme court for civil and commercial matters) on 21 June 2023 in decision No. 21-25.952, published in the Bulletin (the official collection of leading rulings): “Ce texte ne régissant pas l’exclusion d’un associé et la cession forcée de ses actions qui en résulte, la nullité qu’il prévoit vise uniquement à sanctionner la violation de toute clause statutaire ayant pour objet la cession d’actions librement consentie par leur titulaire.” In other words, article L. 227-15 punishes breaches of clauses governing voluntary sales; it does not govern the forced sale resulting from an exclusion, which follows its own statutory regime. Do not therefore attack an exclusion carried out against you by invoking L. 227-15 alone — challenge the exclusion procedure itself. Third, where the blocking shareholder is itself a company whose ownership has changed, article L. 227-17 of the Commercial Code states: “Les statuts peuvent prévoir que la société associée dont le contrôle est modifié au sens de l’article L. 233-3 doit, dès cette modification, en informer la société par actions simplifiée.” The SAS can then suspend that shareholder’s non-financial rights and exclude him under the conditions set by the statutes — a decisive tool when your French partner’s holding company has been sold to a competitor without telling you.
Two practical locks complete the picture. Adding or changing these clauses mid-conflict is deliberately hard: article L. 227-19 of the Commercial Code provides: “Les clauses statutaires visées aux articles L. 227-13 et L. 227-17 ne peuvent être adoptées ou modifiées qu’à l’unanimité des associés.” You cannot impose a new exclusion clause on your partner by majority vote once the dispute has started — which is why these clauses must be written at formation, and why their absence pushes you toward the court remedies of part II. And the price of the forced buyout is the usual battlefield: if the statutes fix a formula, it applies unless it is derisory; if they are silent or the parties disagree, article 1843-4 of the Civil Code provides that “la valeur de ces droits est déterminée, en cas de contestation, par un expert désigné, soit par les parties, soit à défaut d’accord entre elles, par jugement du président du tribunal judiciaire ou du tribunal de commerce compétent, statuant selon la procédure accélérée au fond et sans recours possible”. From abroad, instruct counsel to trigger the expert procedure early, keep paying your share of the company’s running costs in the meantime so you cannot be accused of starving it, and have every notification served by a commissaire de justice (the French judicial officer, formerly huissier, who serves formal notices) to create dated proof. Once the transfer is signed, the buyer files the updated shareholder register, the change of dirigeants (officers) if the excluded partner was also président or directeur général, and the beneficial-owner update with the RBE (Registre des bénéficiaires effectifs — the register of ultimate beneficial owners) through the INPI single window, and the greffe publishes where required. If your company is a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée — the rigid limited-liability company) rather than a SAS, note the difference: there is no statutory exclusion of a SARL shareholder, transfers to outsiders require the consent of members holding at least half the shares under article L. 223-14 of the Commercial Code, which states: “Les parts sociales ne peuvent être cédées à des tiers étrangers à la société qu’avec le consentement de la majorité des associés représentant au moins la moitié des parts sociales”, and most other amendments need three-quarters of the shares under article L. 223-30 of the Commercial Code, which states: “Toutes autres modifications des statuts sont décidées par les associés représentant au moins les trois quarts des parts sociales.” In a 50/50 SARL, that means no forced exit exists and the court routes below become central.
B. How to Cancel Abusive Votes and Paralysing Refusals Before the French Courts
Where the statutes offer no exclusion route — typically a 50/50 SARL, or a SAS whose founders skipped the exclusion clause — the fight moves to individual decisions: the partner votes himself an excessive salary, refuses to approve the annual accounts, blocks the capital increase, or boycotts meetings so no quorum is reached. French law protects every shareholder first through a bedrock right: article 1844 of the Civil Code opens with the rule: “Tout associé a le droit de participer aux décisions collectives.” Any systematic manoeuvre to deprive you of that right — meetings convened without notice to your foreign address, votes held while your emails requesting the documents go unanswered, resolutions adopted by a fake majority — can be referred to the tribunal de commerce for annulment, with damages on top. From abroad, the evidential work is what wins: keep the full email trail showing you asked for notice, accounts and meeting packs; have counsel send formal requests by registered letter and commissaire de justice; and never simply stop attending meetings, because absence weakens a later claim that you were excluded.
Beyond procedure, French courts police the substance of majority power through the twin doctrines of abus de majorité (abuse of majority) and abus de minorité or abus d’égalité (abuse of minority or of equal shareholding). An abuse of majority is found where a decision is taken contrary to the company’s interest (intérêt social) and with the sole design of favouring the majority shareholders to the detriment of the minority: classic examples include voting down all dividends for years to starve the foreign minority out while the majority draws salaries, approving related-party contracts that drain profits to the partner’s other business, or diluting you through a capital increase whose funds the company does not need. The mirror doctrine punishes the blocker: a 50/50 partner who systematically vetoes vital resolutions — refusing the capital increase without which the company will default, rejecting the accounts two years running, blocking the sale of a loss-making asset — commits an abuse of equality where his opposition serves no legitimate interest and endangers the company. The sanctions are graduated and practical: annulment of the abusive resolution, damages paid to the victim or to the company, and, for a blocking minority or equal holder, a court-appointed mandataire ad hoc (a temporary representative designated by the court) instructed to vote in his place on the specific resolution, or authorisation for the majority to proceed without him. Plead these doctrines decision by decision rather than as a vague atmosphere complaint: identify each resolution, show with the accounts and the Kbis-age history of filings that it harms the intérêt social, quantify your loss, and ask the judge for the precise remedy — annulment plus mandataire — instead of a general declaration of war that pushes the court toward the dissolution of last resort.
Two interim tools keep the company alive while these challenges run. If the président refuses to call the meeting that would unblock the situation, the court can appoint a mandataire de justice to convene it. If management itself is the problem — the partner-president signing contracts alone, emptying the account, hiding the books — you can petition for an administrateur provisoire (a provisional administrator appointed by the court to run the company temporarily), an exceptional measure granted only where the company faces imminent peril and its normal bodies no longer function. Support that petition with bank statements, unpaid supplier letters and the greffe filing history showing missing annual accounts, all obtainable online from abroad. And run the calendar in parallel: challenge each abusive resolution within its limitation period, file the expert valuation request under article 1843-4 where price is disputed, and log every refusal in writing, because the judge who later examines dissolution will treat this documented record of attempted remedies as proof that you acted as a responsible shareholder and that the blockage truly comes from the other side.
II. Leaving the Company or Asking a French Court to End It: the Foreign Shareholder’s Exit Routes
When buyout clauses and targeted challenges fail — your partner will neither buy nor sell at any realistic price, boycotts every meeting, and the company drifts toward default — two exits remain: you leave, or the company ends. The choice is financial before it is legal. Leaving by selling your shares caps your exposure, preserves the company’s contracts and jobs, and usually costs less; but it requires a buyer and your partner’s cooperation on approval, and in a 50/50 company the buyer inherits the deadlock. Dissolution kills the vehicle, forces the sale of its assets and the settlement of its debts under a court-appointed liquidator, and is slow and public; but it works even against a partner who refuses everything, and it is the only route that definitively cuts your liability as shareholder for the future. Foreign shareholders often combine both: file for dissolution to create leverage, then settle on a buyout at a fair expert-set price. Whichever route you take, the formalities run through the INPI single window and the greffe of the company’s siège social (registered office), with publication in the BODACC, and all of it can be handled by counsel under powers of attorney legalised or apostilled where required — you do not need to relocate to France to exit a French company.
A. How to Sell Your Shares and Walk Away While Living Abroad
A clean sale starts with mapping who can buy and who must consent. In a SAS, re-read the approval and pre-emption clauses: article L. 227-14 of the Commercial Code states: “Les statuts peuvent soumettre toute cession d’actions à l’agrément préalable de la société”, and your statutes define the procedure, the voting majority and the deemed-approval deadline. Serve the formal demande d’agrément (request for approval) identifying the buyer and the price, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt and simultaneously by commissaire de justice, so the clock starts on a provable date. If approval is refused or deemed refused, well-drafted statutes oblige the company or the remaining shareholders to buy your shares themselves within a fixed period, failing which approval is deemed granted — enforce that buyback obligation rather than accepting a silent veto. In a SARL, the statutory scheme applies even where the statutes are silent: article L. 223-14 of the Commercial Code states: “Les parts sociales ne peuvent être cédées à des tiers étrangers à la société qu’avec le consentement de la majorité des associés représentant au moins la moitié des parts sociales”, the draft sale is notified to the company and to each shareholder, and silence for three months counts as consent. Where your partner engineers a refusal to trap you inside, the same article organises the repurchase of your shares by the remaining shareholders or by the company with a capital reduction — a mechanism counsel should trigger in writing, with a price proposal attached, rather than letting the refusal stand unanswered.
Price is where most foreign exits stall, and the statute provides the way out. Propose a reasoned price based on the last approved accounts, the order book and any independent valuation; if your partner rejects it or answers with a derisory figure, invoke article 1843-4 of the Civil Code, which provides that “la valeur de ces droits est déterminée, en cas de contestation, par un expert désigné, soit par les parties, soit à défaut d’accord entre elles, par jugement du président du tribunal judiciaire ou du tribunal de commerce compétent, statuant selon la procédure accélérée au fond et sans recours possible”. The expert’s valuation binds the parties for the buyback, and the procedure runs in weeks under the accelerated procedure before the president of the court — fast enough to keep a willing third-party buyer interested. Document the company’s tax and social position before signing: obtain the attestation de vigilance from URSSAF (the French social-security collection body — Unions de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales) proving contributions are current, check the impots.gouv.fr account (the French tax authority portal) for pending reassessments, and verify the RBE entry, because a buyer will discount for hidden liabilities and your partner may use them to justify a low price. The sale deed itself — a cession d’actions for a SAS, a cession de parts sociales for a SARL, the latter requiring registration with the tax office within one month — should include the seller’s guarantees (garantie d’actif et de passif) capped and time-limited, a non-competition clause where justified, and, where you were also director, your simultaneous resignation as président, gérant (the manager of a SARL) or directeur général, filed the same day through the INPI single window so your personal exposure as dirigeant (company officer) ends with your shareholding. If no buyer exists at any price and the company is solvent, consider the voluntary route instead: vote the dissolution anticipée (early voluntary dissolution) together, appoint one of you liquidateur amiable (voluntary liquidator), sell the assets, pay the creditors, share the boni de liquidation (liquidation surplus) — with the 2.50 percent droit de partage (registration duty on the surplus) budgeted — and file the radiation (removal from the register) with the greffe, published in the BODACC. That consensual path is cheaper than any lawsuit, which is one more reason to propose it in writing before suing: the judge will notice who offered it.
B. How to Ask a French Court to Dissolve the Company for Deadlock and What It Really Costs
Judicial dissolution for deadlock — dissolution judiciaire pour mésentente — is the remedy the courts keep for companies whose shareholders can no longer work together at all. Its statutory base is article 1844-7 of the Civil Code, which provides: “Par la dissolution anticipée prononcée par le tribunal à la demande d’un associé pour justes motifs, notamment en cas d’inexécution de ses obligations par un associé, ou de mésentente entre associés paralysant le fonctionnement de la société”. Three conditions emerge from the text and a consistent line of rulings: you must be a shareholder bringing the claim yourself, you must show justes motifs (legitimate grounds), and the disagreement must paralyse the company’s operation — not merely annoy you. A very recent decision of the Cour de cassation illustrates the test succeeding: on 28 May 2026, in case No. 25-14.596, the Commercial Chamber rejected an appeal against a dissolution ordered after years of conflict between two groups of shareholders, holding that “la cour d’appel a souverainement déduit que la mésentente entre les associés et la perte de tout affectio societatis entraînaient la paralysie de fonctionnement de la société” — the affectio societatis being the Latin term French lawyers use for the shareholders’ shared will to collaborate. The same ruling recalls the governing principle verbatim: “la société prend fin par la dissolution anticipée, prononcée par le tribunal, à la demande d’un associé pour justes motifs, notamment en cas de mésentente entre les associés paralysant le fonctionnement de la société”. Note what persuaded the courts in that case: chronic disputes over premises, refusal to admit new members, a capital split contested since a stormy 2018 meeting, general meetings that could no longer run normally, and one shareholder trapped for five years unable to leave — a documented accumulation, not a single quarrel. Build your file the same way from abroad: the full set of failed meeting notices, the rejected resolutions, the unanswered formal demands, the stalled accounts at the greffe, and proof that the company’s bodies cannot function — that is the dossier that dissolves.
Procedure, cost and aftermath must be weighed coldly before filing. The action goes before the tribunal judiciaire of the company’s siège social, counsel files an assignation (summons) served by commissaire de justice on the company and on each shareholder, and the court examines whether any milder remedy — exclusion under article L. 227-16 of the Commercial Code, which states: “Dans les conditions qu’ils déterminent, les statuts peuvent prévoir qu’un associé peut être tenu de céder ses actions”, appointment of a provisional administrator, court-ordered buyout — could save the business; dissolution pronounced where a lesser measure would have sufficed is routinely overturned on appeal, so plead explicitly why each alternative fails in your case. Budget realistically: first-instance counsel fees, the commissaire’s service costs, a possible court-ordered expertise on valuation, then the liquidation phase itself — the judgment appoints a liquidateur judiciaire (court-appointed liquidator) whose fees, the asset-sale costs, the settlement of URSSAF and tax debts verified on impots.gouv.fr, and the BODACC publications all come out of the company’s assets before any distribution to you. The dissolution judgment is filed with the greffe through the INPI single window, published in the BODACC with the liquidator’s name, and the company survives only “for the needs of liquidation” until the clôture (closure) and radiation. Two warnings close the analysis. First, dissolution does not erase the past: guarantees (cautions) you signed for the company’s loans survive, and a liquidator who finds asset-stripping by your partner can bring fault-based claims you may need to join from abroad to protect your dividend. Second, if the company is already insolvent — unable to pay due debts from available assets, the French cessation des paiements — dissolution is the wrong action entirely: the law requires a déclaration de cessation des paiements at the greffe within forty-five days and the opening of collective insolvency proceedings, and a dissolution suit filed instead will be thrown out while the debts grow. Check solvency with an accountant before choosing your action, file the right one first time, and keep every filing receipt from the INPI portal: in a cross-border dispute, the shareholder with the complete, dated, officially stamped file usually wins.
Conclusion
A blocked Franco-foreign company is not a lost investment; it is a dispute with a fixed order of operations. Start inside the statutes: activate the SAS exclusion clause under article L. 227-16 where it exists, enforce the approval and buyback mechanics of articles L. 227-14 and L. 223-14, and price the exit through the article 1843-4 expert where the parties disagree — remembering, with the Cour de cassation’s 21 June 2023 ruling, that the nullity of article L. 227-15 punishes breaches of voluntary-sale clauses, not the forced sale of an excluded shareholder. Move next to targeted challenges: defend your article 1844 right to participate in collective decisions, attack resolutions that sacrifice the company’s interest to the majority, and have the court appoint a representative to vote the vital resolution your equal partner vetoes without legitimate reason. Keep dissolution under article 1844-7 for the deadlock that nothing else can cure, and build it the way the 28 May 2026 ruling rewards — a documented accumulation of paralysis and lost affectio societatis, not a single angry meeting. Each step can be run from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore through French counsel, filed through the INPI single window and the greffe, and published in the BODACC without relocating. The shareholders who lose in these disputes are rarely those who live far away; they are those who stopped writing, stopped convening and stopped filing. Stay the shareholder who writes, convenes and files, and French law will give you the exit — or the company — back.
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