You created a company in France, you now live abroad, and you want out: a partner buys your shares, an outside investor steps in, or you simply wind down your involvement. Selling shares in a French company from another country is perfectly possible, but the path depends on one question most foreign shareholders discover too late: are you free to choose your buyer, or must the company approve the sale first? In a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible simplified joint-stock company most foreign founders use), the answer sits in the articles of association. In a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the closed limited liability company), the answer sits in the statute itself. Get this step wrong and the sale can be declared void, the buyer can be rejected, or the price you agreed can be reopened by a court-appointed expert. This guide walks you through the full exit, from the approval of the buyer to the price, the French registration duty, the capital-gains position of a non-resident seller, and the final filing that updates the company record. It is written for a non-French reader: every French acronym is explained, every decisive rule is quoted from the official text, and every practical step can be handled from abroad with a power of attorney.
Naming matters before anything else. In a SAS, the securities you hold are called actions (shares); they are transferred by a simple book entry in the company share register (registre des mouvements de titres) once the sale is agreed. In a SARL, you hold parts sociales (units); they are transferred by a written deed, served on or filed with the company, and published. The tax office, the company registry and the courts treat the two routes differently, and the duties and deadlines below follow that divide. If you are still hesitating between vehicles for a future project, our overview of choosing between a SAS, a SARL, a branch and a subsidiary in France as a foreign investor explains why most internationally mobile founders pick the SAS and what that choice changes on exit.
I. Are you free to sell, or must the company approve your buyer?
A. Selling SAS shares from abroad: read the articles first, because they decide everything
The SAS is a company built on contractual freedom: the Commercial Code leaves the transfer regime to the articles of association (statuts). That freedom cuts both ways. Your articles may say nothing, in which case the sale is free; or they may require the prior approval (agrément) of the buyer, lock the shares for years, or force a shareholder to sell. Because these clauses decide whether your deal can proceed at all, the first task, before signing anything, is to obtain the current certified articles from the trade register and read the transfer clauses line by line, including any shareholders agreement (pacte d’associés) that completes them. Ask the president (président, the legal representative of a SAS) for the up-to-date share register as well, so you know exactly how many shares you own and whether any pledge or seizure already restricts them.
The approval clause is the most common restriction. The statute is one sentence: “Les statuts peuvent soumettre toute cession d’actions à l’agrément préalable de la société.” In plain English, the articles may require that every transfer of shares receive the prior consent of the company. The articles then designate who grants it, commonly the shareholders collectively or the president, and the procedure to request it. From abroad, send the request by tracked registered letter or by the electronic registered service your company accepts, attach the buyer identity, the number of shares and the price, and keep proof of receipt: silence or delay rules, where the articles create them, run from a documented notification. If the articles say nothing about approval, no consent is needed and the buyer simply steps into your shoes once the transfer is recorded.
Two further clauses deserve a check because they can freeze or force a sale. First, the lock-up (inaliénabilité): “Les statuts de la société peuvent prévoir l’inaliénabilité des actions pour une durée n’excédant pas dix ans.” During that period you cannot sell at all, even to another shareholder, unless every shareholder agrees to lift the clause by amending the articles. Second, the forced-transfer and exclusion clauses: “Dans les conditions qu’ils déterminent, les statuts peuvent prévoir qu’un associé peut être tenu de céder ses actions.” The same article adds that the articles may suspend the non-financial rights of that shareholder until the transfer is completed. These clauses are often aimed at a departing manager or a shareholder in lasting disagreement; if one targets you, your exit negotiation happens under its timetable and its price mechanism, not under your preferred deal terms, so read the triggering events and the valuation rule before you make any offer.
The sanction for ignoring these clauses is severe and automatic. “Toute cession effectuée en violation des clauses statutaires est nulle.” A sale completed without a required approval, during a lock-up period, or in breach of a pre-emption right written into the articles is void: the buyer is treated as never having become a shareholder, votes cast with your former shares can be challenged, and dividends paid to the wrong person may have to be repaid. French courts apply this nullity strictly, which is why a serious buyer will always ask for the articles, the share register and a written confirmation that the approval, where required, was granted by the competent body on a recorded date. From abroad, arrange for these documents to be issued before you fly or sign: a Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court), the certified articles, and the minutes granting approval, each translatable by a sworn translator if your bank or a foreign tax office later asks for them.
Approval clauses also reach beyond lifetime sales. The Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation confirmed, in a decision of 16 September 2026 concerning SAS shares inherited after a death, that “Il résulte du deuxième de ces textes que les statuts peuvent soumettre toute transmission d’actions à l’agrément préalable de la société.” The same ruling states the price rule that applies when the company enforces such a clause: “si les statuts ne précisent pas les modalités du prix de cession des actions”, the price rule is agreement first: “ce prix est fixé par accord entre les parties ou, à défaut, déterminé dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1843-4 du code civil.” And it recalls the limit on any expert appointed to value the shares: “l’expert désigné est tenu d’appliquer, lorsqu’elles existent, les règles et modalités de détermination de la valeur prévues par les statuts de la société ou par toute convention liant les parties.” The lesson for a living seller is direct: whatever valuation formula your articles or shareholders agreement contain will bind the expert, so negotiate that formula when you enter the company, and re-read it when you leave. If you are selling from abroad after years away, check whether an old shareholders agreement still imposes a pre-emption right (droit de préemption) on co-shareholders: offering the shares to them first, within the contractual time limit, avoids a later claim that the sale to an outsider breached the contract.
B. Selling SARL units from abroad: a statutory approval procedure with strict deadlines
The SARL is a closed company by design, and unlike the SAS its transfer regime is written in the statute, not left to the articles. Transfers within the family circle are free in principle: “Les parts sociales sont librement transmissibles par voie de succession ou en cas de liquidation de communauté de biens entre époux et librement cessibles entre conjoints et entre ascendants et descendants.” The same article lets the articles require approval even there, but they cannot impose longer decision deadlines or a stricter majority than the statutory procedure. Everything else, and in particular any sale to an outsider, goes through the approval mechanism of the following article, which protects the remaining partners against an unwanted newcomer while guaranteeing the seller a way out when approval is refused.
The core rule is worth quoting in full because each sentence is a deadline you can use: “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, à moins que les statuts prévoient une majorité plus forte.” The articles may therefore demand a higher majority, but never a lower one. The draft sale must be notified to the company and to every shareholder when the company has more than one member. Then comes the sentence that protects a seller facing silence: “Si la société n’a pas fait connaître sa décision dans le délai de trois mois à compter de la dernière des notifications prévues au présent alinéa, le consentement à la cession est réputé acquis.” Three months without an answer means yes. From abroad, this makes the quality of your notification decisive: use international registered post with acknowledgement of receipt, or a commissioner of justice (commissaire de justice, the reformed title of the huissier) for service, keep every receipt, and count the three months from the last notification received. An email alone rarely proves the starting date if the company later disputes it.
A refusal is not the end of the road; it triggers a buyback obligation. The statute continues: if the company refused consent, the shareholders must, within three months of that refusal, buy or arrange the purchase of the units at a price fixed under article 1843-4 of the Civil Code, unless the seller gives up the sale. The manager (gérant, the legal representative of a SARL) can ask a court to extend that period, but the extension cannot exceed six months. Alternatively, with the consent of the selling shareholder, the company may reduce its capital by the nominal value of the units and buy them back itself at the same expert-fixed price; a court can grant the company up to two years to pay on justified grounds, with the sums bearing interest at the legal rate for commercial matters. If none of these solutions materialises when the time runs out, the shareholder may complete the originally planned sale to the original buyer. That fallback is the seller real leverage in negotiation: a refusal that is not followed by a funded buyback within the legal time ends with the outsider entering anyway.
Two refinements matter for sellers living abroad. First, the two-year holding condition: except in succession, liquidation of matrimonial property, or gifts to a spouse or close relative, a seller who has held the units for less than two years cannot force the buyback solutions after a refusal, and must find another exit, typically waiting or negotiating a consensual purchase. Second, any clause contradicting this article is deemed unwritten (réputée non écrite), so an article that would, for example, exclude the buyback route or impose an eight-month silence period has no legal effect, whatever it says. The Court of Cassation polices this procedure closely. In a 24 January 2024 decision on refused approval and valuation, it restated that “si la société a refusé de consentir à la cession, les associés sont tenus, dans le délai de trois mois à compter de ce refus, d’acquérir ou de faire acquérir les parts à un prix fixé dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1843-4 du code civil, sauf si le cédant renonce à la cession de ses parts.” The same ruling confirms the seller freedom that balances the whole mechanism: “Le cédant peut renoncer à tout moment à la cession de ses parts, y compris après la fixation du prix par l’expert.” You can therefore start the approval request without being locked in: if the expert price disappoints, you walk away and keep your units.
The 2024 decision adds the valuation framework: “Selon le troisième de ces textes, la valeur des droits sociaux est déterminée, en cas de contestation, par un expert désigné, soit par les parties, soit à défaut d’accord entre elles, par ordonnance du président du tribunal statuant en la forme des référés.” In practice, after a refusal, propose an expert jointly with the company before going to court: it is faster, cheaper, and the statute puts the expert fees on the company, since “Les frais d’expertise sont à la charge de la société.” If you must apply to the court from abroad, the competent court is the judicial court or the commercial court of the company registered office (siège social), and your French counsel can file the request under a signed power of attorney without your physical presence. For companies seated in Paris and the inner suburbs, that means the Paris courts, whose registries handle these expert appointments routinely; allow several weeks for the order and give the expert the last three years of accounts, the current year management figures, and any recent offer received, because an expert working on thin information values cautiously.
II. Price, tax and registration: what makes the sale final and enforceable?
A. Agreeing the price with the buyer, or letting the independent expert fix it
Whenever the sale is free, the price is whatever buyer and seller agree: a fixed sum, a formula based on future results (earn-out), or a price per share with an adjustment after closing accounts. Put the chosen method in the sale agreement (acte de cession) with unusual care when you live abroad, because you will not be present to renegotiate. Define the reference accounts, the date of economic transfer (jouissance), who receives the dividend for the current year, who bears liabilities revealed after closing, and the currency and payment channel. French banks routinely ask for the signed deed and the updated company documents before crediting a large incoming transfer from a foreign buyer account, so align the deed, the bank file and the tax filing from day one rather than repairing inconsistencies later.
Whenever the statute or the articles send the price to the expert, the regime changes completely. The governing text 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.” Three practical consequences follow. First, the judge appointing the expert does not review the fairness of the price; that assessment belongs to the expert alone, and the appointment order cannot be appealed. Second, as recalled above, the expert must apply any valuation rules written in the articles or in an agreement binding the parties, which gives decisive weight to a contractual formula negotiated in calm times. Third, neither side chooses the expert unilaterally once disagreement is declared: agreement first, court appointment second, with no third route.
Sellers often ask whether they must accept an expert price that undervalues the company. In the SARL refusal procedure, no: the seller may renounce at any moment, even after the expert report, as the Court of Cassation confirmed in the words quoted above. The symmetrical question, whether the buyer or the remaining shareholders must buy at the expert price, receives the opposite answer: once the company refused approval, the shareholders are bound to acquire or arrange acquisition at that price within the legal time, unless the seller renounces. That asymmetry explains why experienced buyers negotiate a consensual price before any refusal is notified, and why sellers from abroad should keep the expert route as a fallback rather than an opening move. A consensual deed signed by both sides, even at a price below a later expert figure, closes the matter faster and cheaper than a valuation fight conducted across time zones.
Document the price discussion in writing at every stage. If you agree directly, the deed states the price, the payment date, and any guarantee of liabilities (garantie d’actif et de passif) the buyer demands; cap it in amount and time, and exclude facts already disclosed in the accounts or known to the buyer. If the expert route opens, send the expert a structured memorandum with your valuation, the restated accounts, the order book, the contracts that secure recurring revenue, and comparable transactions, because the other side will send its own. From abroad, all of this travels electronically with your counsel: grant a clear written mandate (pouvoir) authorising your lawyer to appoint the expert jointly, to receive the report, and either to accept or to renounce on your behalf within limits you set in advance. Never grant an open-ended mandate to sell at any price; cap the acceptable floor in the mandate itself.
B. Paying the French registration duty and tax, then registering the new shareholder
The registration duty (droit d’enregistrement) is the first tax checkpoint, and its rate depends on the company form. The General Tax Code (CGI, Code général des impôts) provides a rate of “A 0,1 %” for transfers of shares in joint-stock companies, which covers the SAS, and a rate of “A 3 %” for transfers of units in companies whose capital is not divided into shares, which covers the SARL, with the important relief that “il est appliqué sur la valeur de chaque part sociale un abattement égal au rapport entre la somme de 23 000 € et le nombre total de parts sociales de la société”. In figures: selling ten per cent of a SAS valued at 500,000 euros costs 500 euros in duty; selling all 100 units of a SARL for 200,000 euros gives a per-unit price of 2,000 euros, an abatement of 230 euros per unit, a taxable base of 177,000 euros, and a duty of 5,310 euros. A five per cent rate applies instead to interests in real-estate-rich entities (sociétés à prépondérance immobilière), a trap for sellers of property-holding companies who assume the standard rate. The deed must be registered within one month: the Code opens the relevant article with the words “Doivent être enregistrés dans le délai d’un mois à compter de leur date”, and late registration draws interest and penalties that quickly exceed the cost of filing on time. Registration happens at the corporate tax office (SIE, service des impôts des entreprises) of the buyer or the company, increasingly online, and your counsel or notary can complete it under mandate while you remain abroad.
The capital gain itself follows a second track that depends on where you live for tax purposes. French domestic law taxes gains on the sale of shares under the provisions running from article 150-0 A of the CGI, whose opening words state that “les gains nets retirés des cessions à titre onéreux, effectuées directement, par personne interposée ou par l’intermédiaire d’une fiducie, de valeurs mobilières, de droits sociaux” fall within income tax. For a seller who is not domiciled in France, article 244 bis B of the same Code provides a levy on gains from rights in a French company “lorsque les droits dans les bénéfices de la société détenus par le cédant ou l’actionnaire ou l’associé, avec son conjoint, leurs ascendants et leurs descendants, ont dépassé ensemble 25 % de ces bénéfices à un moment quelconque au cours des cinq dernières années”, with the levy set, for individuals, at “au taux de 12,8 % lorsqu’il est dû par une personne physique”. Below that 25 per cent family threshold, France generally does not tax the non-resident gain, subject always to the applicable double-tax treaty, which may allocate the taxing right differently and must be checked before the closing date. Treaty analysis belongs at the start of the timetable, not after the funds arrive: the buyer may have to withhold (prélèvement) at closing, and reclaiming an excess withholding from abroad takes months. Keep the acquisition price evidence, the subscription bulletins, the capital-increase records and every expert report, because the taxable gain is the sale price minus a documented cost, and undocumented costs are simply lost.
The final track is opposability: making the buyer the recognised shareholder against the company and against third parties. For SARL units, the Commercial Code requires that “La cession des parts sociales doit être constatée par écrit.” It is enforceable against the company once served in the forms of the Civil Code, with a practical shortcut: “la signification peut être remplacée par le dépôt d’un original de l’acte de cession au siège social contre remise par le gérant d’une attestation de ce dépôt.” Against third parties, the transfer works only “après accomplissement de ces formalités et, en outre, après publication des statuts modifiés au registre du commerce et des sociétés”, which today passes through the INPI Guichet unique (the single online filing portal run by the National Institute for Industrial Property), feeding the National Company Register (RNE, registre national des entreprises) and the register kept by the greffe, with a notice in the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official bulletin publishing company notices) where required. For SAS shares, the transfer order (ordre de mouvement) recorded in the share register and the updated shareholder accounts make the buyer a shareholder, and the subsequent filing updates the directors, the capital table and the beneficial-ownership register where the deal changes them. Until these filings are complete, the seller remains the visible shareholder: dividends, summonses and tax notices keep arriving in the seller name, and the buyer cannot vote safely. From Paris and the Île-de-France, filings go to the Paris greffe for companies seated in the capital; processing is normally a matter of days when the file is complete, and a matter of weeks when the Guichet unique rejects an inconsistent form, so have counsel pre-check the amended articles, the minutes, the identity documents and, for foreign buyers, the apostilled and sworn-translated papers before submitting.
Conclusion
Sell SAS shares from abroad by mastering your articles: seek the approval where it is required, respect any lock-up, record the transfer, and use the expert only as the fallback the Court of Cassation frames. Sell SARL units by mastering the statutory calendar: notify properly, count the three months, enforce the buyback at the expert price or complete the original sale, and remember your right to renounce if the valuation disappoints. In both cases, register the deed within the month, settle the 0.1 or 3 per cent duty with its reliefs, check the 25 per cent non-resident threshold and the treaty before closing, then publish the new shareholder so the Kbis tells the true story. An exit prepared in this order rarely fails; an exit improvised around a handshake regularly ends in nullity, a second tax bill, or a buyer who cannot vote. Start from the articles and the register, fix the price mechanism early, and let the filings close the door behind you.