You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore and you want your French company to have a real Paris address, sign a lease, open its doors and start billing. Two questions then decide almost everything about your budget and your risk: where can the company legally fix its registered office when none of its officers lives in France, and what kind of lease should it sign for the premises where it will actually work. France answers the first question with a flexible but formal system built around the registered office, called the siege social, the Trade and Companies Register, called the RCS (registre du commerce et des societes), and the Kbis extract, which is the official identity card of the company issued by the court clerk, called the greffe. It answers the second question with one of the most tenant-friendly bodies of law in Europe, the statute on commercial leases, called the statut des baux commerciaux, which gives a qualifying tenant a property right in the lease itself, a right to renewal, and a damages award, called the indemnite d’eviction, if the landlord refuses to renew. This guide explains, entirely in English and with every French acronym decoded, how to set the registered address from abroad, how the Kbis is obtained, when a short derogatory lease is enough, when the classic nine-year lease applies, how rents are set and revised, and how to fight an eviction or an unfair termination from another country.

I. How to give your French company a registered address from abroad: domiciliation, home address and the single window

A. Can a foreign founder use a domiciliation company or the director’s home as the registered office?

Every French company must declare a registered office, and that address determines its legal home: the competent commercial court, the competent tax office, called the SIE (service des impots des entreprises), and the place where court papers and tax notices are validly served. A foreign founder who lives abroad has three lawful routes, and the choice depends on whether the company needs a mere postal address or real operating premises.

The first route is a domiciliation contract with an approved provider, called a societe de domiciliation. These companies rent you a prestigious Paris address, forward your mail, make meeting rooms available by the hour, and, above all, supply the signed domiciliation agreement that the registration file requires. The provider must hold a prefectoral approval, and the contract must identify both parties, describe the premises and the services, and be kept available for inspection. From the founder’s point of view the advantages are speed, low fixed cost and a central Paris postcode on the Kbis from day one. The drawback is that a domiciliation address is not an operating site: if your activity needs a shop, a workshop, a kitchen or premises open to the public, the landlord’s lease, the planning rules and the administrative authorisations will require a genuine local lease, and the domiciliation alone will not satisfy them. Banks know this distinction well, so a company that combines a domiciliation address with a credible business plan, a first lease or a first client contract will always open its account faster than a company with an address and nothing else.

The second route is to fix the registered office in premises the company itself rents or owns, which is the natural solution once a commercial lease is signed and is examined in detail in the second part of this guide. The third route, often overlooked, is the home of the legal representative. French statute law states, in wording worth quoting exactly: “Toute personne morale est autorisée à installer son siège au domicile de son représentant légal et y exercer une activité, sauf dispositions législatives ou stipulations contractuelles contraires.” In plain English, any legal entity may place its registered office at the home of its legal representative and carry on business there, unless a statute or a contractual clause, typically the residential lease or the co-ownership rules, called the reglement de copropriete, says otherwise. The official text is Article L123-11-1 of the Commercial Code on the registered office at the representative’s home. For a president of a SAS (societe par actions simplifiee, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) who rents a Paris flat, this route costs nothing, but it is fragile: most Paris residential leases prohibit professional use, many co-ownership rules do the same, and where the representative lives outside France the address may raise eyebrows at the bank and with the tax office. Where a statute or a lease clause blocks the home solution, the law still allows a temporary installation, limited in time, so that the company can be registered quickly while a proper address is found; check the current version of the article before relying on that temporary window, because its duration and conditions have changed over the years.

A fourth configuration deserves a warning because foreign groups use it often: the address of the French accountant, lawyer or business introducer. Nothing prohibits fixing the registered office at a third party’s premises with that party’s written consent, but the third party is not an approved domiciliation provider, the arrangement must be documented as carefully as a domiciliation contract, and the address must remain stable: every move of the registered office requires a shareholder decision, an update of the articles of association, called the statuts, a new filing and a new Kbis, with a notice in the official bulletin of civil and commercial announcements, called the BODACC (bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales). Moving twice in eighteen months because the first host withdrew consent is a classic and expensive beginner’s mistake.

Whatever route is chosen, the address must be proved on paper. The registration file lodged through the single online window, called the guichet unique, which is run by the INPI (Institut national de la propriete industrielle, the French intellectual property and companies office) since 1 January 2023, requires a signed proof of occupation: domiciliation agreement, lease, title deed, recent utility bill plus the host’s consent and identity document for a home address. Files are rejected every day for a missing signature, an expired approval or an address that does not match the supporting document to the letter. Before signing anything in Paris, verify three practical points with the Ile-de-France reality in mind: that the postcode and the arrondissement correspond to the competent commercial court, which for Paris is the Tribunal de commerce de Paris; that the premises allow the declared activity under the lease and the planning rules; and that mail will actually be received and forwarded, because the first letters from the tax office and the social security collection body, called the URSSAF (union de recouvrement des cotisations de securite sociale et d’allocations familiales), arrive within weeks of registration, and ignoring them is how penalties start.

B. How does the company actually get its Kbis once the address is declared?

The Kbis is the document everyone will ask you for: the bank before releasing the share capital, the landlord before signing the lease, the suppliers before granting payment terms, the VAT office before issuing a number. Understanding how it is produced lets a founder living abroad plan the timetable instead of discovering it.

Since 1 January 2023 all company creations pass through the INPI single window, which replaced the previous network of business formalities centres. The founder, or more often the French accountant, called the expert-comptable, or counsel acting under a power of attorney, uploads one complete file: the signed articles of association, the list of officers, the bank certificate proving that the cash capital has been deposited on a blocked account, the identity documents of the shareholders and officers, the proof of the registered address examined above, and the declaration of the beneficial owners, called the RBE (registre des beneficiaires effectifs), which identifies every individual holding, directly or indirectly, more than 25 percent of the capital or voting rights. Foreign shareholders add two classic complications: documents in a foreign language must be translated, and foreign identity documents, company extracts and powers of attorney must be recent, consistent in spelling with the rest of the file, and where required legalised or apostilled. A single mismatch between the shareholder’s name on the passport, on the bank certificate and in the articles is enough to freeze the file, so harmonise spellings before uploading anything.

Once the file is complete, the INPI routes it to the competent court clerk, and the company is entered in the Trade and Companies Register. The RCS entry generates three identifiers the founder must learn: the SIREN (systeme d’identification du repertoire des entreprises), a nine-digit number identifying the company itself, issued by the statistics institute, called the INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques); the SIRET, the SIREN plus a five-digit code identifying each establishment, so the Paris head office and a Lyon branch have the same SIREN but different SIRETs; and the RCS number itself, which appears on the Kbis with the mention of the competent city, for example Paris. The Kbis extract then certifies the company name, the legal form, the capital, the address, the officers, the activity and the registrations. A notice of the creation is published in the BODACC, which is how third parties, and competing advisers, learn that the company exists. In straightforward files the whole chain takes days; in files with a foreign shareholder, a foreign-language document or an unusual activity, it takes weeks, and each request for correction, called a regularisation, restarts part of the clock.

From abroad, three reflexes make the difference. First, give the French representative a written power of attorney covering the INPI filing, the bank steps and the lease signature, with a certified translation if the foreign signatory’s authority derives from a foreign-language board minute. Second, keep one person in charge of the data: the accountant or counsel who holds the single consistent set of names, dates, amounts and addresses used everywhere, from the bank certificate to the RBE declaration. Third, calendar the aftermath of the Kbis, because registration is the starting gun, not the finish line: the share capital must be released by the bank on presentation of the Kbis, the VAT number must be requested where the activity requires it, the first employee must be declared before hiring, and the company’s first tax and social deadlines start running. Founders who treat the Kbis as the end of the process discover the annual legal calendar of a French company, from approving the accounts to filing them from abroad, only when the first penalty arrives; reading it at incorporation week saves real money. And where the bank refuses to open or unblock the account despite a complete file, the remedies exist and have been mapped step by step in the companion guide on corporate bank account refusal, capital deposit and how to challenge the bank from abroad.

II. Should you sign a short derogatory lease or a 9-year commercial lease, and what happens at renewal?

A. Is a 3-year derogatory lease enough to test the French market before committing?

French law offers the foreign founder two very different leases, and signing the wrong one is one of the most expensive mistakes a new entrant can make. The protective statute applies broadly: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre s’appliquent aux baux des immeubles ou locaux dans lesquels un fonds est exploité”, which means the chapter governs leases of buildings or premises in which a business, called a fonds de commerce, is operated. The official text is Article L145-1 of the Commercial Code on the scope of the commercial lease statute. Where the statute applies, the tenant enjoys a right to renewal, a regulated rent and an eviction indemnity; where the parties validly step outside it, the tenant has only the contract. The short lease that steps outside is the derogatory lease, called the bail derogatoire, and its rules must be understood before any signature.

The derogatory lease lets the parties depart from the protective statute when the tenant first takes the premises, on one strict condition of duration. The statute provides, in terms to quote exactly: “Les parties peuvent, lors de l’entrée dans les lieux du preneur, déroger aux dispositions du présent chapitre à la condition que la durée totale du bail ou des baux successifs ne soit pas supérieure à trois ans.” In English, on the tenant’s entry into the premises the parties may depart from the chapter provided the total duration of the lease or successive leases does not exceed three years. The official text is Article L145-5 of the Commercial Code on the three-year derogatory lease. At the end of that period, if the tenant stays on without opposition, a full commercial lease arises by operation of law, with the nine-year duration and all the protections examined below.

The Cour de cassation, which is the French supreme court for civil and criminal matters, sitting in its Third Civil Chamber, has closed the loophole founders sometimes imagine, namely chaining short leases or signing waivers. In a leading decision of 22 October 2020, pourvoi number 19-20.443, concerning successive derogatory leases for the same business in the same premises, the Court held that the three-year ceiling runs from the taking effect of the first derogatory lease and that the parties cannot sign a new derogatory lease for the same business in the same premises once that total has expired, even where the tenant signed an express waiver of the protective statute at the end of each short lease. The interpreted text is the Article L145-5 of the Commercial Code as interpreted by the Cour de cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 22 October 2020, no. 19-20.443. The practical message for a foreign company testing Paris is direct: a two-year lease followed by a one-year extension exhausts the allowance, and a further short lease for the same shop is not available; either leave, or accept that the relationship has become a nine-year commercial lease with a regulated renewal rent.

The classic commercial lease, called the bail commercial three-six-nine, is therefore the default horizon for any durable Paris presence. Its duration rule is famous and must be quoted exactly: “La durée du contrat de location ne peut être inférieure à neuf ans.” The lease cannot be shorter than nine years. The official text is Article L145-4 of the Commercial Code on the nine-year minimum duration. The nickname comes from the tenant’s escape hatches: the tenant may terminate at the end of each three-year period on at least six months’ notice, while the landlord is bound for the full nine years except in narrow statutory cases such as demolition and reconstruction. For a foreign group, the economics are attractive once the concept is clear: the company obtains up to nine years of protected occupation, and keeps a unilateral exit every three years, which is the reverse of the English or American logic where the landlord holds the options.

Before signing either lease, three formalities protect the incoming tenant and cost little. First, the handover inspection, called the etat des lieux, is now mandatory and must be prepared jointly: the statute requires that an inspection report be drawn up by landlord and tenant together or through a jointly appointed agent, both on entry and on exit, a rule whose official text is Article L145-40-1 of the Commercial Code on the joint inspection report, which states that “un état des lieux est établi contradictoirement et amiablement par le bailleur et le locataire ou par un tiers mandaté par eux”. Without that report, every deposit dispute and every dilapidation claim becomes a word-against-word fight the absent foreign director will lose. Second, the security deposit, called the depot de garantie, and any bank guarantee, must be calibrated: Paris landlords commonly ask for three to six months’ rent plus a first-demand guarantee from a French bank, which a newly arrived foreign company may struggle to obtain, so negotiate the guarantee package before the move-in date, not after. Third, the entry premium: in prime Paris streets the outgoing tenant sells its leasehold right, called the droit au bail, or its business for a price, called the pas-de-porte, that can exceed several years of rent; that price buys no bricks, only the protected position the statute creates, so have the accountant model it as part of the entry ticket and confirm in writing that the landlord accepts the intended activity, because a change of activity without the landlord’s agreement can forfeit the protections.

B. How is the rent set, revised and challenged, and what if the landlord refuses to renew?

Renewal is the heart of the French system and the point foreign landlords’ counsel misunderstand most often. The tenant who owns the business operated in the premises has a right to renewal: the statute provides that “Le droit au renouvellement du bail ne peut être invoqué que par le propriétaire du fonds qui est exploité dans les lieux”, meaning only the owner of the business run in the premises may claim it, and the business must have been effectively operated during the three years before expiry save for legitimate reasons. The official text is Article L145-8 of the Commercial Code on the tenant’s right to renewal. At the end of the nine years, the lease does not simply stop. It ends only through a formal notice, called a conge, given six months in advance, or through a renewal demand. The statute states exactly: “Par dérogation aux articles 1736 et 1737 du code civil, les baux de locaux soumis au présent chapitre ne cessent que par l’effet d’un congé donné six mois à l’avance ou d’une demande de renouvellement.” If neither party acts, a written lease continues tacitly beyond its term, and during that tacit extension either side must give six months’ notice expiring on the last day of a calendar quarter. The official text is Article L145-9 of the Commercial Code on notice and tacit extension. For the director living abroad, the consequence is operational: diary the lease expiry minus nine months, not minus six, because instructing French counsel, serving the papers through the proper channel and negotiating usefully takes longer from another continent, and a missed deadline converts a strong renewal position into a precarious tacit occupant.

The renewal rent is then the second battlefield. The governing principle is simple to state and expensive to apply: “Le montant des loyers des baux renouvelés ou révisés doit correspondre à la valeur locative.” Renewed or revised rents must reflect the rental value. The official text is Article L145-33 of the Commercial Code on rent at rental value, which lists the five assessment criteria: the characteristics of the premises, their permitted use, the parties’ respective obligations, local commercial factors, and the prices commonly charged nearby. In Paris, the same square metres can carry very different rental values between a side street in the 19th arrondissement and a shopping axis in the 8th, between a ground-floor shop with a window frontage and a fifth-floor office, and between a lease where the tenant paid for the fit-out and one where the landlord did. Where the parties disagree, the rent judge, called the juge des loyers commerciaux, sitting at the judicial court, called the Tribunal judiciaire, appoints a valuation expert and fixes the rent; in Paris that litigation runs before the specialised commercial-rent chamber of the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris, which handles these valuations every week and knows the Paris micro-markets street by street. Two guardrails frame the fight: the rent of a renewed lease is normally capped by reference to the change in a statutory index, with uncapping, called deplafonnement, allowed only in defined cases such as a long lease duration, a substantial change in local commercial conditions or a change of activity, and every three years each party may demand a revision of the current rent toward rental value. Model both scenarios before signing: the entry rent with its indexation clause, and the plausible renewal rent at year nine, because the cheapest entry rent with a harsh charges clause and a full uncapping risk often costs more over nine years than a higher entry rent with protective drafting.

Refusal to renew is where the statute shows its teeth. The landlord may refuse renewal, but as a rule must pay: the statute states “Le bailleur peut refuser le renouvellement du bail”, and immediately adds the price, namely to “payer au locataire évincé une indemnité dite d’éviction égale au préjudice causé par le défaut de renouvellement”. The landlord who evicts pays an eviction indemnity equal to the loss caused by the absence of renewal. The official text is Article L145-14 of the Commercial Code on refusal of renewal and eviction indemnity, which details the components: the market value of the business assessed by professional usage, plus standard removal and reinstallation costs and the transfer taxes for an equivalent business. Only narrow statutory exceptions, such as serious and legitimate grounds against the tenant or demolition and reconstruction of an unsafe building, allow refusal without payment, and the landlord invoking them carries the burden of proof.

The supreme court has made that indemnity genuinely protective in two ways the foreign founder should know. First, the indemnity must reflect the leasehold right even where the tenant has already moved: in a decision of 13 October 2021, pourvoi number 20-19.340, the Third Civil Chamber quashed an appeal judgment that had valued the leasehold right at zero because the evicted tenant had relocated to cheaper equivalent premises, holding that the indemnity must account for the value of the leasehold right in the premises lost, which forms part of the business itself. The interpreted text is the Article L145-14 of the Commercial Code as applied by the Cour de cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 13 October 2021, no. 20-19.340. In practice, the landlord cannot escape payment by pointing out that the tenant found a cheaper shop; the protected Paris location had a value, and the expert must price it. Second, the termination clause for non-payment is policed strictly: the statute provides that “Toute clause insérée dans le bail prévoyant la résiliation de plein droit ne produit effet qu’un mois après un commandement demeuré infructueux”, and that “Le commandement doit, à peine de nullité, mentionner ce délai.” Any automatic termination clause takes effect only one month after an unsuccessful formal demand, and that demand must state the one-month period on pain of nullity. The official text is Article L145-41 of the Commercial Code on the termination clause and the one-month demand. In decisions of 6 November 2025, pourvois numbers 23-21.334 and 23-21.454, the Third Civil Chamber added that a clause imposing a shorter period conflicts with this public-policy rule and must be treated as unwritten where the lease was current when the 2014 reform aligned the period to one month. The interpreted text is the Article L145-41 of the Commercial Code as applied by the Cour de cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 6 November 2025, nos. 23-21.334 and 23-21.454. For the founder, the lesson is concrete: a landlord’s demand that omits the one-month warning, or a lease clause promising termination within fifteen days, does not validly terminate the lease, and the tenant who cures the breach within the month, and may ask the court for payment time, keeps the premises.

Acting from abroad requires one final discipline, which is time. Commercial-lease disputes prescribe quickly: “Toutes les actions exercées en vertu du présent chapitre se prescrivent par deux ans.” All actions under the chapter are time-barred after two years. The official text is Article L145-60 of the Commercial Code on the two-year limitation period. Two years run fast when the director lives on another continent, so every congé, every renewal demand, every rent notice and every demand for payment should be forwarded to French counsel the day it arrives, served and answered through a commissaire de justice, the court officer formerly called the huissier, where formal service is required, and answered in French within the statutory windows. The Paris case-law experience is consistent: tenants who instruct early settle well, often with a renewed lease at a negotiated rent or a properly priced indemnity, while tenants who answer from abroad six months late litigate from a hole.

Conclusion

A foreign founder can give a French company a Paris address and secure premises for nine years without ever living in France, provided the two halves of the operation are handled in the right order. First, fix a provable registered office, through an approved domiciliation provider, the company’s own lease or, where the lease and co-ownership rules allow it, the representative’s home, then file one consistent set of papers through the INPI single window, obtain the RCS entry, the SIREN and the Kbis, and publish in the BODACC. Second, choose the lease with open eyes: a derogatory lease of at most three years to test the market, knowing that no waiver and no chain of short leases extends it, or a nine-year commercial lease with its triennial exit, its tacit extension for want of a six-month congé, its renewal rent at rental value and its eviction indemnity if the landlord refuses renewal. Around both halves, keep the same three habits: verify every text at its official source before signing, diary every deadline with a three-month safety margin for cross-border instructions, and have every formal notice served, answered and challenged through French counsel and a commissaire de justice. Paris rewards the prepared entrant with the strongest tenant protection in Europe; it charges the unprepared entrant the full price of learning it late.