The email from the French bank rarely uses the word “illegal”. It says the Kbis (extrait Kbis, the official extract from the registre du commerce et des sociétés, RCS) is “incomplete”, or that the président of the SAS (société par actions simplifiée) cannot be a Delaware corporation, or that the person who signed the account is not the représentant permanent (permanent representative) on the extract. The same week, the INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle) guichet unique — the one-stop counter that now carries filings once made on paper at the greffe, the commercial court’s registry — may reject the appointment because the parent’s papers have no sworn French translation, or because you tried to install the same US company as gérant (manager) of a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée).

French company law draws a line that US and UK group charts often ignore. A SARL is managed only by natural persons. A SAS may have a legal person as président, and that is when article L. 227-7 of the Commercial Code pulls the officers of the foreign parent into French civil and criminal liability, unless the bylaws name a permanent representative. This article is for the parent just refused by the bank or the greffe, and for the officer abroad told he is personally in the firing line. It is not hidden de facto management, which is a different claim. The appointment mechanics and the Kbis file are described in the earlier guide on a foreign company as president of a French SAS. It is the official mandate: who may hold it, what the RCS must show, who pays if the subsidiary fails, and how to contest a filing that the Paris commercial court registry has blocked.

I. Can a foreign company be president of a French SAS, and why the greffe refuses it for a SARL

A. Why a SARL cannot have a company as gérant and a SAS can

The first document to put on the table is not the bank’s onboarding checklist. It is the form of the French company. Article L. 223-18 of the Commercial Code opens with a sentence that ends the discussion for a SARL: “La société à responsabilité limitée est gérée par une ou plusieurs personnes physiques.” The company is managed by one or more natural persons. The rest of the article allows those managers to be chosen from outside the shareholders and to be named in the bylaws or by a later decision, but it never opens the door to a corporate gérant. A Delaware Inc., a UK Ltd or a Luxembourg S.à r.l. cannot sit in that seat. If the INPI file or the Kbis draft shows a legal person as gérant, the greffe is not being difficult: it is applying a statutory prohibition.

The SAS is built on the opposite default. Article L. 227-6 of the Commercial Code states: “La société est représentée à l’égard des tiers par un président désigné dans les conditions prévues par les statuts. Le président est investi des pouvoirs les plus étendus pour agir en toute circonstance au nom de la société dans la limite de l’objet social.” The company is represented towards third parties by a president appointed under the bylaws, with the widest powers to act in the company’s name within the corporate purpose (objet social). The article does not say that the president must be a human being. Article L. 227-7 then assumes the contrary and regulates it: “Lorsqu’une personne morale est nommée président ou dirigeant d’une société par actions simplifiée, les dirigeants de ladite personne morale sont soumis aux mêmes conditions et obligations et encourent les mêmes responsabilités civile et pénale que s’ils étaient président ou dirigeant en leur nom propre, sans préjudice de la responsabilité solidaire de la personne morale qu’ils dirigent.” When a legal person is appointed president or officer of a SAS, the officers of that legal person are subject to the same conditions and obligations and incur the same civil and criminal liabilities as if they were president in their own name, without prejudice to the joint and several liability of the legal person they manage.

That is the legal reason a foreign parent can be président of a French SAS and cannot be gérant of a French SARL. It is also why the choice between SAS and SARL is not only about social-security bills and dividend withholding. If the group chart requires the parent itself to hold the French mandate — because the bank in New York wants a single signatory chain, because the directors’ and officers’ policy is written at parent level, or because no individual will accept a French Kbis — the vehicle has to be a SAS, or the French company has to appoint a natural person. Trying to “fix” a SARL by naming the parent as manager produces a rejection, not a workaround.

The SA (société anonyme, the classic public limited company) sits in between, and the contrast matters when a banker or a greffe clerk quotes the wrong article. Article L. 225-20 of the Commercial Code says, for a member of the board: “Une personne morale peut être nommée administrateur. Lors de sa nomination, elle est tenue de désigner un représentant permanent qui est soumis aux mêmes conditions et obligations et qui encourt les mêmes responsabilités civile et pénale que s’il était administrateur en son nom propre, sans préjudice de la responsabilité solidaire de la personne morale qu’il représente.” A legal person may be appointed director. Upon appointment it must designate a permanent representative, who incurs the same civil and criminal liabilities as if he were a director in his own name, without prejudice to the joint liability of the legal person. The SAS rule in L. 227-7 is broader and, until 2023-2024, more dangerous: it does not, on its face, require a named permanent representative; it points to “the officers” of the parent. That is the trap the Cour de cassation has now organised around the bylaws, which is the subject of Part II.

Third parties, including the bank, are entitled to rely on the person who appears as président on the Kbis. Article L. 227-6 adds that the company is bound even by acts of the president that fall outside the corporate purpose, unless it proves that the third party knew the act exceeded that purpose or could not have been unaware of it given the circumstances, “étant exclu que la seule publication des statuts suffise à constituer cette preuve” — the mere publication of the bylaws is not that proof. Statutory limits on the president’s powers are “inopposables aux tiers” (not binding on third parties). A foreign parent that accepts the mandate therefore accepts a French face towards every supplier, landlord and credit institution, whether or not the group’s internal matrix says that only the CFO in London may sign.

None of this requires the president, or the permanent representative, to reside in France. What it does require is a form that the law allows, a decision taken in the manner the bylaws prescribe, and a RCS file that a third party can read. The incorporation sequence — capital deposit, registered office, Kbis, VAT, first hire — is the same whether the president is a human or a company. The difference is the extra layer of foreign corporate documents and the extra liability channel that L. 227-7 opens into the parent’s own board.

B. What INPI, the greffe and the bank actually want on the file

The RCS is not a private database of the company. Article L. 123-1 of the Commercial Code provides: “Il est tenu un registre du commerce et des sociétés auquel sont immatriculés, sur leur déclaration :” companies with their seat in a French département, among others, so that the inscriptions and the documents filed are brought to the public’s knowledge. The filing itself now travels through the INPI guichet unique. The legal effect still sits in the RCS held by the greffier (registrar) of the commercial court. In Paris, that office publishes its own guidance as the greffe of the Tribunal des activités économiques de Paris. A rejection at the guichet unique is therefore not a mere IT incident: it is a refusal to write a public fact that banks, landlords and courts will later treat as the truth of who binds the company.

Article R. 123-54 of the Commercial Code, in the version in force since 6 May 2026, lists what the company must declare about its officers. For natural persons it wants names, date and place of birth, personal domicile and nationality, and, for those who can bind a commercial company, whether they bind it alone or jointly. When those persons “sont des personnes morales”, the file must show “la dénomination sociale, la forme juridique, l’adresse du siège” and then a fork that is written for foreign groups. For a French legal person already on the register, cross-references suffice. For a company from another EU or EEA State, “le numéro et le lieu d’immatriculation dans un registre public”. For the case that matches a US, Singapore or Dubai parent: “Pour les personnes morales non immatriculées ou relevant de la législation d’un Etat non membre de la Communauté européenne ou partie à l’accord sur l’Espace économique européen, les nom, nom d’usage, pseudonyme, prénoms et domicile des personnes ayant le pouvoir de les diriger, gérer ou engager à titre habituel.” The names and domicile of the people who have power to direct, manage or bind the foreign parent in the ordinary course must go on the French RCS. Point 3° d) then adds: “Lorsque la désignation d’un représentant permanent est prévue par un texte, les renseignements le concernant mentionnés au 2°.” When a text requires a permanent representative, that person’s identity is declared as for a natural-person officer.

The Paris greffe has published the operational reading of that fork. Where a statute requires a permanent representative — a board member of a SA, for example — that representative is always declared, and if the legal person is a non-EU company the legal representative of the parent is declared as well, so that two natural persons may appear. For a SAS, the same greffe page states that a non-EU or non-EEA corporate officer must declare the identity of its legal representative. That is why a Delaware parent cannot hide behind a company name on the Kbis: the RCS will ask for a human being, either as permanent representative or as the person who directs the parent. The bank’s KYC team is not inventing a rule when it asks for that person’s passport, proof of address and, very often, a French-language copy of the parent’s constitutional documents.

Those foreign documents do not travel in English. The INPI file and the greffe still work in French. A certificate of incorporation, a good-standing extract, a board resolution appointing the French SAS as a subsidiary and naming the individual who will be permanent representative, and the parent’s own bylaws, have to arrive as a sworn translation by a traducteur assermenté (translator sworn before a French court of appeal) when the clerk cannot read the original. That is a separate, practical bottleneck, already mapped for foreign filings. An apostille under the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 may also be required on the public document before it is translated. A file that omits either step comes back as “pièce non conforme” (non-compliant exhibit), which the bank will repeat in its own language as “we cannot identify the legal representative”.

The appointment itself must exist in French company law before anyone uploads it. For a SAS, article L. 227-6 sends you to the bylaws. If the bylaws say that the president is appointed by a collective decision of the shareholders, a written decision of the foreign parent as sole shareholder, or minutes of a general meeting, must name the legal person, accept the mandate, and — if you follow the 2024 case law discussed below — designate the permanent representative in the same instrument or in the bylaws. If the bylaws are silent on a corporate president, they should be amended first. Changing the président is a registrable event. It is not a side letter between the CFO and the French accountant.

The beneficial-owner register (registre des bénéficiaires effectifs, RBE, now carried in the national company register) is a parallel file, not a substitute. The natural persons who ultimately own or control the French SAS still have to be declared even if the president is the parent company. A bank that has frozen the account over a RBE mismatch will not unfreeze it merely because the Kbis now shows a Delaware president. The two registers have to tell the same story about who stands behind the French company.

In Paris and Île-de-France the practical sequence is unforgiving. The INPI filing is national, but the RCS of a company with its seat in Paris is still watched by the Paris commercial court under article L. 123-6 of the Commercial Code. A landlord in the 8th arrondissement, a corporate banker at La Défense and a huissier (bailiff) serving a writ at a domiciliation address will all read the same Kbis. If the extract shows a foreign company as président and no individual who can be served or who can open the account, the file stops. The way out is not an English-language power of attorney emailed to the relationship manager. It is a complete RCS picture: parent identified, human being identified, documents translated, bylaws aligned.

II. Who is liable after the appointment and how to contest a rejection or a personal claim

A. Article L. 227-7, the permanent-representative clause, and the 2023-2024 split at the Cour de cassation

Once the parent is on the Kbis as président, three liability channels open at once, and they are not the same. The first is the company’s own liability towards third parties under article L. 227-6: the SAS is bound. The second is the civil liability of the president towards the company and, in narrow cases, towards third parties. Article L. 227-8 of the Commercial Code states: “Les règles fixant la responsabilité des membres du conseil d’administration et du directoire des sociétés anonymes sont applicables au président et aux dirigeants de la société par actions simplifiée.” The rules that fix the liability of SA directors and management-board members apply to the president and officers of the SAS. Those rules sit in article L. 225-251: “Les administrateurs et le directeur général sont responsables individuellement ou solidairement selon le cas, envers la société ou envers les tiers, soit des infractions aux dispositions législatives ou réglementaires applicables aux sociétés anonymes, soit des violations des statuts, soit des fautes commises dans leur gestion.” Directors and the managing director are liable, individually or jointly and severally as the case may be, to the company or to third parties, for breaches of SA legislation, breaches of the bylaws, or faults committed in their management.

Towards third parties, that civil channel is not a general guarantee of the company’s debts. On 17 September 2025 the commercial chamber of the Cour de cassation, in decision no. 21-11.647, recalled, after citing L. 225-251 and L. 227-8: “Il résulte de ces textes que la responsabilité personnelle du président d’une société par actions simplifiée à l’égard des tiers ne peut être retenue que s’il a commis une faute séparable de ses fonctions et qu’il en est ainsi lorsqu’il commet intentionnellement une faute d’une particulière gravité, incompatible avec l’exercice normal des fonctions.” Personal liability of a SAS president towards third parties can be retained only if he committed a fault separable from his functions, which is the case when he intentionally commits a fault of particular gravity, incompatible with the normal exercise of the office. A simple management fault is not enough. The Court quashed a court of appeal that had held a president personally liable to clients for a “faute de gestion” in an insurance declaration. The foreign officer who is being sued by a French supplier on the mere ground that “you were the president” therefore has a defence — unless the facts are recast as an intentional, particularly serious fault, or as a criminal offence, or as insolvency liability.

The criminal channel is explicit. Article L. 244-1 of the Commercial Code applies to the SAS the SA offences and adds: “Les peines prévues pour le président, les administrateurs ou les directeurs généraux des sociétés anonymes sont applicables au président et aux dirigeants des sociétés par actions simplifiées.” The penalties provided for the president, directors or managing directors of an SA apply to the president and officers of a SAS. Article L. 242-6 includes the misuse of company assets: it punishes with five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 375,000 euros the fact for the president, directors or managing directors of an SA “de faire, de mauvaise foi, des biens ou du crédit de la société, un usage qu’ils savent contraire à l’intérêt de celle-ci, à des fins personnelles ou pour favoriser une autre société ou entreprise dans laquelle ils sont intéressés directement ou indirectement”. Using, in bad faith, the company’s assets or credit in a way they know is contrary to its interest, for personal ends or to favour another company in which they are interested. That is the classic abus de biens sociaux. Through L. 227-7 and L. 244-1, it is the wording a French prosecutor can read onto the officers of a foreign parent that has taken the SAS presidency, if cash or intra-group credit has been pulled out of the French company.

The insolvency channel is the one that has moved in the last two years, and it is the one that should decide how the bylaws are drafted. Article L. 651-1 of the Commercial Code provides: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre sont applicables aux dirigeants d’une personne morale de droit privé soumise à une procédure collective, ainsi qu’aux personnes physiques représentants permanents de ces dirigeants personnes morales, aux entrepreneurs individuels à responsabilité limitée et aux entrepreneurs individuels relevant du statut défini à la section 3 du chapitre VI du titre II du livre V.” The chapter on liability for insufficiency of assets applies to the officers of a private legal person in collective proceedings, and to the natural persons who are permanent representatives of those officers when the officers are themselves legal persons. Article L. 651-2 then allows the court, when a judicial liquidation reveals an insufficiency of assets, in the event of a management fault that contributed to that insufficiency, to decide that the amount “sera supporté, en tout ou en partie, par tous les dirigeants de droit ou de fait, ou par certains d’entre eux, ayant contribué à la faute de gestion”. Simple negligence is not enough: “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.”

On 8 January 2020, in decision no. 18-15.027, published in the Bulletin, the commercial chamber held, for a SA: “il résulte de l’article L. 651-1 du code de commerce que la responsabilité pour insuffisance d’actif, encourue sur le fondement de l’article L. 651-2 du même code, est notamment applicable aux dirigeants d’une personne morale de droit privé soumise à une procédure collective et aux personnes physiques représentants permanents de ces dirigeants personnes morales”. It then applied L. 225-20 and added that when a SA is directed by a legal person that has designated a permanent representative, the management fault can be characterised “indifféremment à l’égard de celui-ci ou à l’égard de son représentant permanent” — interchangeably against the legal person or against the permanent representative. On 19 November 2013, in decision no. 12-16.099, also published in the Bulletin, the same chamber had already judged that article L. 651-1 “ne subordonne pas la condamnation du représentant permanent de la personne morale à la condamnation de celle-ci”. The liquidator of a French SAS whose president was a Luxembourg company did not have to obtain a judgment against the Luxembourg company before obtaining one against the individual. A foreign parent that thinks “they will only sue the Delaware entity” is reading a rule the Cour de cassation has refused.

The SAS-specific pair of 2023 and 2024 is what a foreign general counsel should put in the board pack. On 13 December 2023, in decision no. 21-14.579, published in the Bulletin, the commercial chamber held: “Il résulte de la combinaison des articles L. 227-7, L. 651-1 et L. 651-2 du code de commerce que, lorsque la personne morale mise en liquidation judiciaire est une société par actions simplifiée (SAS) dirigée par une personne morale, la responsabilité pour insuffisance d’actif, prévue par le troisième texte précité, est encourue non seulement par cette personne morale, dirigeant de droit, mais aussi par le représentant légal de cette dernière, en l’absence d’obligation légale ou statutaire de désigner un représentant permanent de la personne morale dirigeant au sein d’une SAS.” In the absence of a legal or statutory obligation to designate a permanent representative of the corporate officer inside the SAS, insufficiency-of-assets liability is incurred not only by that corporate officer but also by its own legal representative. The Court applied the same combination to a legal person that was only a de facto director of the SAS, and added that the management fault can be characterised “indifféremment à l’égard de celui-ci ou à l’égard de son représentant légal”.

Eleven months later the same chamber drew the counterpart. On 20 November 2024, in decision no. 23-17.842, published in the Bulletin, it quashed a Lyon court of appeal that had condemned, as a matter of course, the natural person who directed a Swiss company which itself directed a French SAS. The appeal court had said that L. 225-20 applies only to SAs and that, under L. 227-7, the Swiss director “ne peut qu’avoir également la qualité de dirigeant de droit” of the French SAS. The Cour de cassation answered: “Il résulte de l’article L. 651-1 du code de commerce que la responsabilité pour insuffisance d’actif, encourue sur le fondement de l’article L. 651-2 du même code, est applicable aux personnes physiques représentants permanents des dirigeants personnes morales.” Then: “Lorsqu’une société par actions simplifiée est dirigée par une personne morale qui a désigné un représentant permanent conformément aux statuts de cette société, la personne physique dirigeant cette personne morale ne peut voir sa responsabilité pour insuffisance d’actif engagée si elle n’a pas également la qualité de représentant permanent.” When a SAS is directed by a legal person that has designated a permanent representative in accordance with the SAS bylaws, the natural person who directs that legal person cannot be held on L. 651-2 if he does not also have the capacity of permanent representative. The appeal court had not even looked at whether the French bylaws had named another individual as permanent representative. That missing inquiry was enough for cassation, and it carried with it the personal bankruptcy measure (faillite personnelle) that had been stacked on the same capacity.

The drafting lesson is brutal and useful. If the French SAS bylaws say nothing about a permanent representative, L. 227-7 and the 2023 judgment leave the legal representatives of the foreign parent exposed on insufficiency of assets. If the bylaws require a named permanent representative and that person is the one on the Kbis, the 2024 judgment gives the other officers of the parent an argument that they are not dirigeants de droit of the French SAS for L. 651-2. The argument does not erase L. 227-7 for criminal law, does not erase a de facto-director case against someone who actually ran the subsidiary from abroad, and does not erase a separable fault towards a third party. It does mean that “we appointed the parent as president” is no longer a sentence that should be typed without a named individual and a bylaw clause.

A SARL does not offer that architecture, because there is no corporate gérant to begin with. Article L. 223-22 makes the natural-person managers liable to the company or to third parties for breaches of SARL rules, breaches of the bylaws, or management faults, and it treats as unwritten any clause that would subject the derivative action to a prior shareholder vote. The foreign founder who wanted the parent to be the manager of a SARL is not looking at a lighter regime. He is looking at a legally impossible appointment, and then at a human gérant who carries L. 223-22 in his own name.

B. How to challenge a greffe refusal, a bank freeze, or an insufficiency-of-assets claim in Paris

The first contest is the filing. If the INPI guichet unique or the greffe refuses to register the parent as président, or refuses the named permanent representative, the dispute is not a customer-service ticket. Article L. 123-6 of the Commercial Code states that the RCS “est tenu par le greffier de chaque tribunal de commerce, sous la surveillance du président ou d’un juge commis à cet effet, qui sont compétents pour toutes contestations entre l’assujetti et le greffier”. The register is kept by the registrar of each commercial court, under the supervision of the president or of a judge assigned for that purpose, who have jurisdiction over all disputes between the person subject to registration and the registrar. For a company seated in Paris, that judge sits in the Paris commercial court. The application should attach the rejection, the bylaws, the parent’s corporate documents and their sworn translations, the decision appointing the parent and the permanent representative, and a note that identifies which limb of R. 123-54 the clerk is said to have misread. An implicit refusal — silence after a complete filing — is still a decision that L. 123-6 allows the court to review.

If the rejection is well founded, the remedy is to rebuild the file, not to argue with the bank. Typical defects are a SARL with a corporate gérant; a SAS whose bylaws do not allow a legal person as president; a non-EU parent with no natural person identified as required by R. 123-54, 3° c); a permanent representative who is not the person named in the bylaws; a translation that is not sworn; a parent extract that is out of date. Each of those is curable. None of them is cured by a comfort letter from a US attorney that “under Delaware law the corporation may serve as a director of a subsidiary”.

The second contest is the bank. French credit institutions treat the Kbis as the map of who may open and operate the account. If the extract shows a foreign company as président and the bank cannot complete KYC on that company and on the individual who actually signs, the account stays closed or is frozen. That is a different freeze from an AML review of a foreign shareholder or from a missing RBE filing, but the operational result is the same: payroll does not leave. The answer is to put on the Kbis the person the bank can identify, and to keep the parent as president only if the permanent representative is prepared to be that person. A power of attorney given by the parent to a French accountant does not replace a RCS mention. Third parties are not bound by an unpublished internal mandate.

The third contest is personal. A liquidator who serves an L. 651-2 writ on the CEO of the foreign parent should be met with the 2023-2024 pair, not with a general denial. The questions are factual and must be in the first submissions: Was the French company a SAS? Was the parent the président of record, or only alleged to be a de facto director? Did the bylaws require a permanent representative? Who was named, and who appeared on the Kbis? Is the defendant that named person, or another officer of the parent? Has the liquidator pleaded a management fault that is more than simple negligence, as L. 651-2 now requires? The 2013 judgment shows that the parent need not have been sued first. The 2020 judgment shows that the fault can be made out against the legal person or against the permanent representative. The 2024 judgment shows that an officer who is not the permanent representative, where the bylaws created that office, is not automatically a dirigeant de droit of the French SAS. Mixing those holdings is how a defence is lost.

If the writ is not an insolvency claim but a supplier’s action against the individual, decision no. 21-11.647 of 17 September 2025 is the first filter: a separable, intentional, particularly serious fault, not a mere management mistake. If the file is a criminal investigation for abus de biens sociaux, L. 242-6 through L. 244-1 and L. 227-7 is the grid, and a French criminal lawyer needs the intra-group cash movements, not a group policy memo. If the liquidator has also pleaded de facto management, that is the neighbouring action already discussed for foreign parents, and it has its own proof (positive, independent management) that should not be conceded in a sentence about the official mandate.

Time and geography matter. Insufficiency-of-assets claims are brought in the insolvency court that opened the French proceedings. For a Paris SAS that is usually the Paris commercial court, sitting in its insolvency formation. A dispute with the greffe about the Kbis goes to the president of that court or the judge assigned under L. 123-6. A bank dispute follows the jurisdiction clause in the account agreement, often a Paris court. Serving an individual who lives in the United Arab Emirates, as in the 2024 case, does not stop the French court from ruling on his capacity as officer of the French SAS. What stops it, when it stops, is a correct reading of the bylaws and of L. 651-1, not the foreign domicile.

The clean reconstruction, when the group still wants the parent on the Kbis, is therefore a short list. Convert a SARL that needs a corporate officer into a SAS, or appoint a natural person. Amend the SAS bylaws so that a legal person may be president and so that a permanent representative must be designated. Pass a shareholder decision that names the parent and the individual in the same instrument. File through the INPI guichet unique with sworn translations and, for a non-EU parent, the identity of the persons who bind that parent. Align the RBE. Hand the bank a Kbis that shows both the parent and the human being who will sign. Keep the board minutes of the parent that show who accepted to be that human being, because that is the person L. 651-1 and L. 227-7 will look for if the French company later fails.

Conclusion

A foreign company can be president of a French SAS. It cannot be manager of a French SARL. Article L. 223-18 confines the SARL to natural persons. Articles L. 227-6 and L. 227-7 allow a legal person to represent a SAS and, in the same breath, extend French civil and criminal liability to the officers of that legal person, jointly with the parent itself. Article R. 123-54 then forces the RCS, especially for a non-EU parent, to show the humans who actually direct that parent, and to show a permanent representative when a text requires one. The Paris greffe and the INPI guichet unique are applying those texts when they reject a file, not inventing a nationality bar.

The Cour de cassation has spent five years telling liquidators and defendants who, among those humans, can be ordered to cover an insufficiency of assets. In 2013 it refused to make a judgment against the foreign parent a precondition. In 2020 it allowed the fault to be made out against the legal person or against the permanent representative of a SA. In 2023 it held that, for a SAS with no legal or bylaw duty to name a permanent representative, the legal representative of the corporate president is in the firing line. In 2024 it held that where the SAS bylaws have named a permanent representative, another officer of the parent is not, for that reason alone, a dirigeant de droit of the French company. In 2025 it repeated that a SAS president is not personally liable to third parties for a mere management fault. The foreign parent that wants the mandate without reading those holdings is buying a Kbis that the bank may still refuse and a liability that the bylaws could have organised. The parent that has already been refused, or already been sued, should put the form of the company, the bylaws, the Kbis and the writ in front of a French lawyer before the next filing repeats the same gap.

Need a quick opinion on your case.

Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an avocat of the cabinet, to read the Kbis, the bylaws, the INPI rejection or the bank letter, and the instrument that appointed the foreign company as président.

The discussion is built on your documents: the current extract, the parent’s corporate papers and sworn translations, the decision naming the permanent representative, and any writ or mise en demeure already served on an officer abroad.

Call Maître Reda Kohen on +33 6 46 60 58 22 (06 46 60 58 22 in France) or use the firm’s contact form.

The firm advises companies in Paris and Île-de-France, including before the Tribunal de commerce de Paris and the commercial courts of the inner suburbs.