The letter rarely uses the French phrase capital non libéré. It arrives as a bank onboarding form, a credit-committee note, or a bailiff (huissier de justice) serving a saisie-attribution — an attachment of debts — on the foreign shareholder. The French SAS (société par actions simplifiée, a simplified joint-stock company) or SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, a private limited company) was incorporated with only part of the cash capital paid into a blocked account. The rest was left “to be called later”. Years later, or the first time the company needs a facility, someone asks whether the share capital is fully paid.
French law treats unpaid capital as a claim of the company against its members, not as a private arrangement that can be forgotten because the parent sits abroad. Article L. 223-7 of the Commercial Code sets the SARL timetable. Articles L. 225-3 and L. 227-1 set the SAS timetable. Article 1843-3 of the Civil Code makes the defaulting member a debtor of interest without a prior demand and lets any interested person force a capital call in urgent proceedings. The Cour de cassation has held that a creditor of the company can seize that claim. A liquidator can sue the shareholders. The Kbis — the official extract of the Trade and Companies Register (RCS, registre du commerce et des sociétés) issued by the greffe (the commercial court registry) — does not spell out how much remains unpaid. The bank will.
This article is written for a foreign owner who still wants the French vehicle. It explains the payment clock, who can come after the unpaid fraction, and how to call, prove and, if needed, recover it from a defaulting co-shareholder without waiting for insolvency.
I. When must unpaid French share capital be paid, and who can seize it
A. How much a SAS versus a SARL must pay at incorporation, and what the five-year deadline does
The incorporation path itself is set out in the guide to setting up a French company as a foreign founder. The first confusion is vocabulary. “Subscribed capital” (capital souscrit) is the amount written in the articles of association (statuts). “Called capital” (capital appelé) is the fraction the manager has formally asked members to pay. “Paid-up capital” (capital libéré) is the fraction that has actually been paid. A company can look fully capitalised on a slide deck and still have a receivable on its own members. That receivable is what French banks, creditors and liquidators look for.
For a SARL, the Commercial Code is explicit. Article L. 223-7 of the Commercial Code provides: « Les parts sociales doivent être souscrites en totalité par les associés. Elles doivent être intégralement libérées lorsqu’elles représentent des apports en nature. Les parts représentant des apports en numéraire doivent être libérées d’au moins un cinquième de leur montant. La libération du surplus intervient en une ou plusieurs fois sur décision du gérant, dans un délai qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’immatriculation de la société au registre du commerce et des sociétés. » Cash shares (apports en numéraire) may therefore be paid as to one fifth only at incorporation. In-kind contributions (apports en nature) must be paid in full at once. The gérant (the SARL manager) calls the remainder, in one or several instalments, within five years of registration with the RCS. Service-Public Entreprendre states the same timetable in plain language: 20 per cent of cash contributions at creation, the balance within five years after the SARL is registered.
The same article L. 223-7 adds a trap that foreign groups meet when they try to recapitalise later: « Toutefois, le capital social doit être intégralement libéré avant toute souscription de nouvelles parts sociales à libérer en numéraire, à peine de nullité de l’opération. » A cash capital increase of a SARL is void if the existing capital is still unpaid. That is a different operation from a foreign investor subscribing to a capital increase from abroad. The increase cannot even start until the original cash has been paid up.
For a SAS the starting fraction is higher. Article L. 225-3 of the Commercial Code, written for the société anonyme (SA, a public limited company), provides: « Les actions de numéraire sont libérées, lors de la souscription, de la moitié au moins de leur valeur nominale. La libération du surplus intervient en une ou plusieurs fois sur décision du conseil d’administration ou du directoire selon le cas, dans un délai qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’immatriculation de la société au registre du commerce et des sociétés. Les actions d’apport sont intégralement libérées dès leur émission. » At least half of the nominal of cash shares must be paid on subscription. In-kind shares are paid in full on issue. The five-year clock again runs from RCS registration. Service-Public Entreprendre repeats the rule for the SAS: at least half of the cash contribution must be paid at creation, the other half within five years of registration.
That SA rule applies to the SAS because article L. 227-1 imports the SA regime except for a closed list of articles. L. 225-3 is not on that list. The same article then reallocates the board’s powers: « Pour l’application de ces règles, les attributions du conseil d’administration ou de son président sont exercées par le président de la société par actions simplifiée ou celui ou ceux de ses dirigeants que les statuts désignent à cet effet. » The person who calls the unpaid SAS capital is therefore the président (or another officer named in the articles), not a board that the SAS does not have. A foreign parent that appointed itself as président, or that left a local nominee in place, needs to know which officer actually holds that power before it sends a payment instruction.
A later cash increase of a SAS is not the same timetable. Article L. 225-144 provides: « Les actions souscrites en numéraire sont obligatoirement libérées, lors de la souscription, d’un quart au moins de leur valeur nominale et, le cas échéant, de la totalité de la prime d’émission. 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. » On an increase, one quarter of the nominal plus the entire share premium is due on subscription, and the five-year clock runs from the day the increase becomes definitive, not from the original incorporation. Mixing the two clocks is a common error in group minutes drafted abroad.
The cash that is paid at incorporation does not sit in the founder’s pocket. For a SARL, article R. 223-3 of the Commercial Code provides: « Dans les huit jours de leur réception, les fonds provenant de la libération des parts sociales sont déposés pour le compte de la société en formation et par les personnes qui les ont reçus à la Caisse des dépôts et consignations, chez un notaire ou dans un établissement de crédit. Mention de la libération des parts et du dépôt des fonds est portée dans les statuts. » The Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC, the state deposit institution), a notary (notaire) or a credit institution must receive the funds within eight days. Article L. 223-8 then locks them: « Le retrait des fonds provenant de la libération des parts sociales ne peut être effectué par le mandataire de la société, avant l’immatriculation de celle-ci au registre du commerce et des sociétés. » Until the greffe issues the first Kbis, nobody withdraws the money. The same logic applies, with its own deposit rules, to a SAS. A foreign founder who wired the first instalment to a personal account “for convenience” has not liberated the capital. The company still has a claim, and the incorporation file is incomplete.
Industry contributions (apports en industrie — know-how or work) do not form part of the capital. They cannot be used to pretend that cash has been paid. In-kind overvaluation is a separate liability: the members who skip the contribution auditor (commissaire aux apports), or who adopt a different value, are jointly liable to third parties for five years. That is not unpaid cash capital, but it is the neighbouring risk a bank will also test.
The five-year period is a maximum, not a grace period that the members can extend by silence. The gérant or président may call earlier, in several instalments, if the articles allow it. Once the legal maximum has expired without a call, article 1843-3 of the Civil Code opens an urgent route to force the call, discussed below. What the five-year expiry does not do is erase the debt. Unpaid capital remains a claim of the company. Putting the company into dormancy (mise en sommeil) does not, by itself, rewrite L. 223-7 or L. 225-3.
B. What a bank, a creditor or a liquidator can do if the capital is still unpaid
The Kbis names the capital figure. It does not certify that the figure has been paid. Banks therefore ask for the deposit certificate from incorporation, the bank statement of the later calls, and often a certificate of the gérant or président. A foreign-owned company that cannot produce those papers is treated as a company whose equity is smaller than its articles suggest. Credit, a merchant lease, a guarantee line or even the maintenance of the account can be refused on that ground alone. The unpaid fraction is not a theoretical accounting line. It is missing cash.
Creditors do not have to wait for the company to sue its own shareholders. On 12 May 2016 the Second Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation, in a decision published in the Bulletin, pourvoi no. 15-13.833, held: « Mais attendu que le capital social non libéré est une créance de la société contre ses associés pouvant faire l’objet d’une saisie de la part d’un créancier de cette société ; » The unpaid capital is a claim of the company against its members, and a creditor of the company may seize it. In that case a shareholder who still owed €30,000 on his contribution was served with an attachment and failed, without a legitimate reason, to answer the bailiff’s questions as garnishee (tiers saisi). The Court of Appeal was entitled to treat him as debtor of the seized sums. The practical translation for a foreign parent is blunt. If a French supplier, the tax office or URSSAF (the bodies that collect social-security contributions) holds an enforceable title against the subsidiary, they can attach the parent’s unpaid capital in the parent’s hands. Living in London, Delaware or Dubai does not turn that claim into a domestic secret.
Insolvency makes the same claim even more visible. The liquidator steps into the company’s rights. The Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence, in a judgment of 19 June 2025, RG no. 21/10784, applied the SAS texts to a liquidator’s action. It held: « En application des dispositions de l’article L.225-3 du code de commerce, applicable aux SAS en vertu de l’article L.227-1, le liquidateur est fondé à agir contre les actionnaires en recouvrement du capital non libéré. » It added: « Le liquidateur est par ailleurs fondé à se prévaloir des dispositions de l’article L.228-28 du code de commerce applicable aux valeurs mobilières émises par les sociétés par actions et aux termes duquel l’actionnaire défaillant, les cessionnaires successifs et les souscripteurs sont tenus solidairement du montant non libéré de l’action. » The unpaid SAS capital is therefore recoverable from the defaulting shareholder, from successive transferees and from the original subscribers, jointly and severally. A share sale that “left the unpaid capital with the seller” does not bind the company or the liquidator.
Article L. 228-28 states that solidarity in full: « L’actionnaire défaillant, les cessionnaires successifs et les souscripteurs sont tenus solidairement du montant non libéré de l’action. La société peut agir contre eux, soit avant ou après la vente, soit en même temps, pour obtenir tant la somme due que le remboursement des frais exposés. » The person who pays the company then has a recourse against the successive holders; the final burden falls on the last of them. There is a time-limit for former holders: « Deux ans après le virement d’un compte de valeurs mobilières à un autre compte, tout souscripteur ou actionnaire qui a cédé son titre cesse d’être tenu des versements non encore appelés. » Two years after the securities-account transfer, a transferor drops off for calls not yet made. Calls already due remain. A foreign seller of SAS shares who wants a clean exit therefore documents which fraction has been called and paid, and which has not.
Defaulting SAS shares also lose their political rights after the period fixed by decree. Article L. 228-29 provides: « A l’expiration du délai fixé par décret en Conseil d’Etat, les actions sur le montant desquelles les versements exigibles n’ont pas été effectués, cessent de donner droit à l’admission et aux votes dans les assemblées d’actionnaires et sont déduites pour le calcul du quorum. Le droit aux dividendes et le droit préférentiel de souscription aux augmentations de capital attachés à ces actions sont suspendus. » A parent that still holds unpaid SAS shares can find itself unable to vote the annual accounts, unable to take a dividend, and unable to subscribe a later increase, until principal and interest are paid. That is separate from the general limit on distributions in article L. 232-11: « Hors le cas de réduction du capital, aucune distribution ne peut être faite aux actionnaires lorsque les capitaux propres sont ou deviendraient à la suite de celle-ci inférieurs au montant du capital augmenté des réserves que la loi ou les statuts ne permettent pas de distribuer. » Unpaid capital does not shrink the capital figure used for that test. Paying a dividend while the company is hollow is a different, and serious, problem.
Tax is a further, narrower, consequence. Article 219, I, b of the General Tax Code opens a 15 per cent rate of corporation tax (impôt sur les sociétés, IS) on the first €42,500 of taxable profit for companies with turnover of no more than €10 million. The same paragraph requires: « Le capital des sociétés mentionnées au premier alinéa du présent b doit être entièrement libéré et détenu de manière continue pour 75 % au moins par des personnes physiques ou par une société répondant aux mêmes conditions dont le capital est détenu, pour 75 % au moins, par des personnes physiques. » Unpaid capital blocks the reduced rate. So does ownership by a foreign corporate parent that is not itself held 75 per cent by individuals. A group-owned SAS should not budget for 15 per cent merely because someone read a formation blog. The 25 per cent standard rate in article 219 remains the default, as already mapped in the overview of French corporate tax for foreign owners.
Director exposure sits one step further on. Article L. 651-2 of the Commercial Code allows the court, where a judicial liquidation shows a shortfall of assets, to put all or part of that shortfall on the de jure or de facto directors whose management fault contributed to it. The same article then draws a line: « 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 is not enough. Leaving unpaid capital uncalled for years while the company slides toward insolvency is not automatically a management fault, and it is not automatically innocent. The facts matter: whether a call was possible, whether the director was also the defaulting shareholder, whether creditors were kept in the dark. A foreign président who never called the parent’s own unpaid capital will have a difficult explanation. Criminal law adds a sharper edge for the SAS. Article L. 244-1 applies articles L. 242-1 to L. 242-6 to the SAS. L. 242-1 punishes, with a fine of €150,000, the fact for founders, the président, directors or managing directors of an SA of issuing or dealing in shares where cash shares were not paid up as to at least half on subscription, or where in-kind shares were not fully paid before registration. The penalties provided for the président of an SA apply to the président and officers of a SAS. That text is about issuance below the legal minimum, not about a later delay in calling the surplus. It still explains why a bank asks for the original deposit certificate and not only for a comfort letter.
None of this turns the foreign shareholder into a guarantor of the company’s trading debts. Members of a SAS or SARL are liable only up to their contribution. Unpaid capital is the unpaid part of that contribution. It is not a cautionnement (personal guarantee) of the kind a bank or landlord sometimes demands of a director, a topic already treated separately. It is the amount the member promised and has not yet paid. Creditors who attach it are collecting the company’s own asset, not piercing the corporate veil.
II. How a foreign owner calls the funds, sues a defaulting shareholder and keeps the file bankable
A. How to call unpaid capital from abroad and prove payment to the bank and the greffe
The first document to open is not the Kbis. It is the articles, the subscription forms, the original deposit certificate and the last approved accounts. The accounts should show “capital subscribed but not called” (capital souscrit non appelé) as an asset, or they should show that the capital is fully paid. If the two sources disagree, the company has an accounting problem as well as a legal one. A foreign owner who cannot find the deposit certificate should ask the original bank, the notary or the CDC, using the company’s SIREN number (the nine-digit identification number in the SIRENE directory) and the date of incorporation. The greffe will not reconstruct that certificate from the Kbis.
The call itself is a decision of the gérant (SARL) or of the président or the officer designated by the articles (SAS). It is not a shareholders’ meeting, unless the articles say otherwise. The decision should state the fraction called, the amount due from each member, the bank account of the company, the payment deadline and the legal basis (L. 223-7 or L. 225-3 as applied by L. 227-1). It should be notified to every member at the address in the register of members. A parent that is the sole member can combine the officer’s decision and the payment instruction in one paper trail, but the payment must still hit the company’s account. Wiring the money to a current account of the parent, or booking it as a shareholder loan from the foreign parent, does not liberate capital. A loan is a debt of the company. Paid-up capital is equity. Banks and tax auditors read the two lines differently, and so does the Commercial Code.
Interest starts without a reminder. Article 1843-3 of the Civil Code provides: « L’associé qui devait apporter une somme dans la société et qui ne l’a point fait devient de plein droit et sans demande, débiteur des intérêts de cette somme à compter du jour où elle devait être payée et ce sans préjudice de plus amples dommages-intérêts, s’il y a lieu. » The defaulting member becomes a debtor of interest as of right and without demand, from the day the sum was due, without prejudice to further damages. The “day it was due” is the day fixed by the call, or, once the legal five-year maximum has passed, the day the remainder could no longer be deferred. Do not wait for a formal notice to start counting. The notice still matters, because it proves the call and because, for a SAS, it opens the one-month path to selling the shares, discussed below.
Payment should be traced. The company collects a bank statement showing the origin of the funds, the name of the paying shareholder and the amount. If the payer is a foreign parent, the statement should match the parent’s name on the Kbis and on the register of beneficial owners (RBE, registre des bénéficiaires effectifs). A payment from a sister company, a director’s personal account or an unexplained offshore vehicle will be treated as unexplained funds under anti-money-laundering rules, and the bank may freeze it. Where several members pay on the same day, each transfer should be identifiable. The gérant or président then records the liberation in the minutes and, if the articles state the paid-up fraction, prepares an update of the articles. A change of the articles is filed on the Guichet unique, the INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the National Institute of Industrial Property) one-stop portal that now carries RCS filings. If the articles only state the subscribed capital, a filing may not be required merely because the unpaid fraction has been paid; the bank file still needs the internal minutes and the statements. When in doubt, file. A greffe that later sees a mismatch between the articles and the accounts will ask questions at the worst time.
Paris and Île-de-France add a practical layer rather than a different legal clock. A company with its registered office in Paris answers to the Tribunal de commerce de Paris and to the greffe of that court. Companies in Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis or Val-de-Marne answer to the commercial court of their département. The five-year period, the one-fifth and one-half minima, and the creditor’s right to seize unpaid capital do not change with the postcode. What does change is the channel: the référé of the president of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris is a busy list; filings on the Guichet unique still have to match the greffe that holds the RCS file; banks in the Paris market are used to asking for a capital-liberation certificate and will not accept a scan of the articles in its place. A foreign président who cannot come to Paris can sign the call by a power of attorney that satisfies the bank and, if a filing follows, the INPI. Sworn translation of a foreign power has its own rules; the substance of the call remains a French corporate act.
If the company no longer needs the unpaid cash — a dormant vehicle, a planned strike-off, a group exit — the alternative is not to pretend the capital was paid. It is to reduce the capital to the amount actually paid, with the majority and the creditor-protection rules that a reduction requires, or to wind the company up in an orderly way. Closing a French company from abroad often surfaces unpaid capital at the last minute, because a liquidator who distributes remaining assets without collecting what members still owe exposes himself. Reducing capital to avoid a call is a members’ decision, not a side letter. It must be published and filed. It is also the wrong tool if the company is already in cessation of payments: then the unpaid capital is an asset for the creditors.
A foreign owner who is recapitalising because of losses is in a different box again. Unpaid original capital is not the same as the duty to reconstitute equity when losses eat half of the capital, already examined in the article on negative equity and reconstitution of capital. One can owe both: the original unpaid fraction, and a later reconstitution. Paying the original call does not, by itself, repair a negative-equity situation. Mixing the two votes in one set of minutes is how groups produce documents that the greffe rejects.
B. How to force a capital call in urgent proceedings, recover from a defaulting shareholder, and what happens if you wait too long
When the officer will not call the funds — because the président is himself the defaulting parent, because co-shareholders are in a deadlock, or because the five-year maximum has expired in silence — article 1843-3 of the Civil Code opens an urgent door. After recalling that each member is a debtor of what he promised to contribute, it provides: « En outre, lorsqu’il n’a pas été procédé dans un délai légal aux appels de fonds pour réaliser la libération intégrale du capital, tout intéressé peut demander au président du tribunal statuant en référé soit d’enjoindre sous astreinte aux administrateurs, gérants et dirigeants de procéder à ces appels de fonds, soit de désigner un mandataire chargé de procéder à cette formalité. » Any interested person may ask the president of the court, sitting in urgent proceedings (référé), either to order the directors, managers and officers, under a periodic penalty (astreinte), to make the calls, or to appoint an agent to do so. “Any interested person” is wider than the company. A co-shareholder, a creditor, and in practice a member who wants the company to be able to file accounts or to go into solvent liquidation, can use it. In Paris the application goes to the president of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris. Elsewhere in Île-de-France it goes to the president of the commercial court of the registered office.
That urgent route has a limit that foreign litigants regularly miss. On 7 July 2009 the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation, pourvoi no. 08-16.433, quashed a Court of Appeal that had, on the basis of article 1843-3, paragraph 5, condemned a SARL manager to pay his own unpaid capital. The Court first restated the text: « Attendu qu’aux termes de ce texte, lorsqu’il n’a pas été procédé dans un délai légal aux appels de fonds pour réaliser la libération intégrale du capital, tout intéressé peut demander au président du tribunal statuant en référé soit d’enjoindre sous astreinte aux administrateurs gérants et dirigeants de procéder à ces appels de fonds, soit de désigner un mandataire chargé de procéder à cette formalité ; » It then held: « Attendu qu’en prononçant sur le fondement du texte susvisé une condamnation à libérer une part de capital social qu’il ne prévoit pas, la cour d’appel l’a violé par fausse application ; » The référé can force the call. It cannot, on that text, itself condemn a member to pay. Payment is a claim on the merits: an action to recover the unpaid contribution, brought by the company, by the agent appointed to make the call, or later by the liquidator. A foreign co-shareholder who only obtains an order “to pay” in urgent proceedings, without a call and without an action on the merits, has a document that the Cour de cassation has already broken once.
Once a valid call has been ignored, the SAS has a statutory enforcement tool that the SARL does not copy in the same words. Article L. 228-27 provides: « A défaut par l’actionnaire de libérer aux époques fixées par le conseil d’administration, le directoire ou les gérants, selon le cas, les sommes restant à verser sur le montant des actions par lui souscrites, la société lui adresse une mise en demeure. Un mois au moins après cette mise en demeure restée sans effet, la société poursuit, sans aucune autorisation de justice, la vente desdites actions. » After a formal notice that remains ineffective for at least one month, the company sells the unpaid shares without a court order. Unlisted shares are sold at public auction. The defaulting shareholder remains liable for, or benefits from, the difference. Combined with L. 228-28, the company can sue the defaulter and the successive holders before, after or during that sale, for the sum due and for costs. A foreign parent that has stopped paying cannot hide behind a nominee holder; solidarity is the point of the text. For a SARL, recovery is the ordinary action against the member who subscribed the parts, on L. 223-7 and article 1843-3, plus whatever the articles say about exclusion. Do not import the SAS public auction into a SARL by analogy.
Prescription is the last trap. Article 2224 of the Civil Code provides: « Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer. » Personal actions lapse five years from the day the holder of the right knew or should have known the facts allowing him to exercise it. The company’s action to recover unpaid capital is a personal action. The starting point is debated in the cases and turns on when the sum became due and when the company, through its officer, could act. A call that is never made does not freeze time forever; an officer who is also the defaulting shareholder cannot easily argue that the company “did not know”. Conversely, a company that waits many years after a documented call, without interruption of prescription, can lose the claim. Interruption requires a legal cause (a summons, an acknowledgement of debt), not a friendly email. The 2016 seizure case shows that creditors will not wait for the company to get its file in order. The 2025 Aix judgment shows that a liquidator will not wait either. The foreign owner who wants to collect from a defaulting co-shareholder should issue the call, then, if needed, issue proceedings, rather than negotiate indefinitely while article 2224 runs.
A last, uncomfortable, situation is the one in which the foreign owner is both the unpaid shareholder and the officer who should have called the funds. The référé in article 1843-3 can then be used against him by a co-shareholder or a creditor. The action on the merits can be used by a later liquidator, as in Aix. A creditor can seize the unpaid fraction, as in the 2016 Bulletin decision. Paying now, with a clean bank trail, is cheaper than explaining later why the call was never made. If the company is already unable to pay its debts as they fall due, the unpaid capital is an asset of the insolvency estate. Paying it to a chosen creditor instead of to the company is a preference. Paying it to the company, on a formal call, is what the Code asks for.
Evidence for a hearing, in Paris or elsewhere, is ordinary and often missing. Keep the articles, the subscription form, the deposit certificate, the officer’s call, the notice, the bank statement, the register of members and, for a SAS share transfer, the order form or account transfer that starts the two-year clock in L. 228-28. Foreign documents need a sworn translation when they are filed or produced in court. Minutes signed only in English, with no French version, are a gift to the other side. The greffe and the Tribunal de commerce de Paris work in French. So does the INPI portal.
Conclusion
Unpaid French share capital is not a paperwork detail that expires when the first Kbis is issued. In a SARL, at least one fifth of the cash must be paid at incorporation and the rest within five years, on the gérant’s call; new cash parts are void until that is done. In a SAS, at least half must be paid on subscription and the rest within five years, on the président’s call; in-kind shares are paid at once. The five-year period is a maximum. Interest runs as of right from the day the sum was due. Any interested person can force a missing call in urgent proceedings, but that référé does not itself condemn a member to pay. Payment is recovered on the merits, by the company, by a court-appointed agent or by a liquidator, and, in a SAS, with joint liability of successive holders and a statutory sale of the unpaid shares after notice.
Creditors have their own key. The Cour de cassation has said that unpaid capital is a claim of the company against its members and that a creditor may seize it. A bank that cannot see a deposit certificate will treat the company as undercapitalised. The reduced 15 per cent rate of corporation tax is closed where the capital is not fully paid, and is in any event closed to most foreign corporate parents because of the 75 per cent individuals test. Simple negligence does not trigger a shortfall-of-assets action against a director; silence over an unpaid call while insolvency approaches is a fact pattern that has to be argued, not assumed away.
A foreign owner who still wants the French vehicle should treat the next weeks as a closing checklist: reconstruct the subscribed, called and paid figures from the articles and the deposit certificate; have the gérant or président issue a call that can be proved; pay from the named shareholder into the company’s account; keep the statements; update the articles if they state the paid-up fraction; and send the pack to the bank before the bank asks. A foreign owner who is owed unpaid capital by a co-shareholder should not confuse the urgent order to call with the action to be paid, and should not let article 2224 run. A foreign owner who no longer wants the vehicle should reduce the capital or wind the company up, rather than leave an unpaid claim for a liquidator to collect. Silence is also a decision. It is the one that allows a creditor, a greffe or a court-appointed agent to finish the file.
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The firm advises companies in Paris and Île-de-France, including before the Tribunal de commerce de Paris and the greffes of the inner suburban courts.