You live abroad and own shares in a French company, most often a société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the simplified joint-stock company that foreign founders usually choose) or a société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited liability company). A buyer has appeared, a co-founder wants your stake, or you simply want out. Selling shares in a French company from another country is perfectly possible, but it is nothing like selling listed stock with one click. Your articles of association (the statuts, the company’s constitutional document) may force you to ask permission before selling, the price may have to be set by an independent expert if anyone disagrees, the French Treasury takes a registration duty even when the deed is signed abroad, and a buyer who stops paying halfway leaves you chasing money across borders. This guide walks through the sale in the order a careful seller thinks about it: first whether you are allowed to sell and at what price, then how the tax and paperwork make the transfer stick. Read it together with our companion guides on how to choose between an SAS, an SARL, a branch and a subsidiary in France, which explains the vehicle you are now exiting, and on shareholder current accounts, repayment and interest for founders living abroad, because most exiting founders must settle their current account on the way out.

I. Are You Allowed to Sell, and at What Price: Leaving With the Right Number

A. Approval Clauses and Transfer Restrictions: Reading Your Articles Before You Sign Anything

The first document to open is not the buyer’s offer but your own statuts. In an SAS, freedom of contract is wide, and the law expressly allows the shareholders to lock the door: “Les statuts peuvent soumettre toute cession d’actions à l’agrément préalable de la société.” Any transfer of shares can be made subject to the company’s prior approval (Article L227-14 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). Approval clauses (clauses d’agrément) can cover every sale, including sales to family members or to existing shareholders, and they typically require you to notify the company of the buyer’s identity, the number of shares and the price offered, then wait for a decision within the period the articles set. Selling without the required approval is not a minor procedural slip: “Toute cession effectuée en violation des clauses statutaires est nulle.” Any transfer made in breach of the articles is void (Article L227-15 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). A void sale means the buyer never became a shareholder, dividends paid to the wrong person must be unwound, and votes cast at meetings can be challenged. From abroad, the practical discipline is simple: request the approval by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt or by bailiff’s writ, calendar the exact expiry date of the decision period, and sign nothing definitive before approval is granted or deemed granted.

Your articles may contain three neighbouring clauses that change the shape of your exit, and each follows its own majority logic. First, the articles can force a shareholder to sell: “Dans les conditions qu’ils déterminent, les statuts peuvent prévoir qu’un associé peut être tenu de céder ses actions. Ils peuvent également prévoir la suspension des droits non pécuniaires de cet associé tant que celui-ci n’a pas procédé à cette cession.” Exclusion clauses can oblige a shareholder to transfer shares and can suspend non-financial rights until the transfer happens (Article L227-16 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). Second, change-of-control clauses police the identity of corporate shareholders: “Les statuts peuvent prévoir que la société associée dont le contrôle est modifié au sens de l’article L. 233-3 doit, dès cette modification, en informer la société par actions simplifiée. Celle-ci peut décider, dans les conditions fixées par les statuts, de suspendre l’exercice des droits non pécuniaires de cet associé et de l’exclure.” When the controller of a corporate shareholder changes, the SAS must be informed and can suspend that shareholder’s non-financial rights and exclude it (Article L227-17 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). This matters directly to foreign founders who hold their French shares through a foreign holding company: selling the holding, merging it or moving its seat can trigger the French clause even though no French share changed hands on paper. Third, adopting or amending these clauses is itself fenced: “Les clauses statutaires visées aux articles L. 227-13 et L. 227-17 ne peuvent être adoptées ou modifiées qu’à l’unanimité des associés. Les clauses statutaires mentionnées aux articles L. 227-14 et L. 227-16 ne peuvent être adoptées ou modifiées que par une décision prise collectivement par les associés dans les conditions et formes prévues par les statuts.” Inalienability and change-of-control clauses require unanimity, while approval and exclusion clauses require a collective shareholder decision under the articles’ own rules (Article L227-19 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). A majority that quietly inserts an approval clause without following these majorities creates paper that a court will tear up.

In a SARL the architecture is less flexible and more protective of the remaining shareholders. Transfers to outsiders need consent: “Les parts sociales ne peuvent être cédées à des tiers étrangers à la société qu’avec le consentement de la majorité des associés représentant au moins la moitié des parts sociales, à moins que les statuts prévoient une majorité plus forte.” Shares can only be sold to third parties outside the company with the consent of a majority of shareholders holding at least half of the shares, unless the articles demand a higher majority (Article L223-14 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). The procedure is codified step by step: notify the planned sale to the company and to every shareholder, wait up to three months, and silence means consent. Refusal does not trap you inside forever: “Si la société a refusé de consentir à la cession, les associés sont tenus, dans le délai de trois mois à compter de ce refus, d’acquérir ou de faire acquérir les parts à un prix fixé dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1843-4 du code civil, sauf si le cédant renonce à la cession de ses parts.” After a refusal, the shareholders must buy or arrange the buyout of your shares within three months at a price set under the expert procedure of Article 1843-4, unless you withdraw from the sale. The same article lets the company buy back your shares for cancellation with your consent, with expert fees borne by the company and a possible court extension of up to six months at the manager’s request. For a founder abroad, the SARL route is slower but safer than it looks: a refusal converts into a forced buyout at an expert-set price rather than a locked door.

Courts enforce these procedures exactly as written, and a recent exclusion-and-buyback dispute shows what happens when the process goes off the rails. In a case about an excluded shareholder of a French SAS, where the articles required approval requests by registered letter with the buyer’s details and the price, imposed a six-month buyout window after any refusal, and sent price disputes to an expert, years of litigation followed over which shares were covered, whether the deadline had expired and how the expert should be appointed. The Angers Court of Appeal ultimately annulled the first court’s judgment and rejected the shareholder’s buyback demand outright: “Annule le jugement entrepris.” Then, ruling on the claims before it: “Rejette la demande de M. [I] de rachat de ses actions par la société Bio-direct.” The demand that the company buy back the shares was dismissed (Angers Court of Appeal, Commercial Chamber A, 28 January 2025, case no. 20/01518, full decision on courdecassation.fr). The warning for a seller abroad is plain: exit clauses only protect you if every notification, deadline and appointment follows the letter of the articles and the statute. Approximate compliance produces landmark bills, not exits.

B. Setting the Price and Securing Payment: Expert Valuation, Earn-Outs and Getting the Money Across Borders

Price is where most private sales succeed or collapse, and French law offers a ladder with three rungs. The first rung is agreement: negotiate a fixed price, possibly with an earn-out (complément de prix) tied to future turnover or profit, and write the formula so precisely that an accountant can apply it without interpretation. The second rung is a contractual third-party valuer: the Civil Code has long accepted that the price can be left to an outside estimate, providing that “Il peut cependant être laissé à l’estimation d’un tiers ; si le tiers ne veut ou ne peut faire l’estimation, il n’y a point de vente, sauf estimation par un autre tiers.” The price may be left to a third party’s assessment, and if that person cannot or will not value, there is no sale unless another valuer is appointed (Article 1592 of the Civil Code on Légifrance). Name the valuer, the valuation date, the standards to apply and a replacement mechanism in the sale agreement itself. The third rung is the statutory expert of Article 1843-4, which applies whenever the law refers to it, most commonly after an approval refusal or under an exclusion clause. The statute provides: “Dans les cas où la loi renvoie au présent article pour fixer les conditions de prix d’une cession des droits sociaux d’un associé, ou le rachat de ceux-ci par la société, la valeur de ces droits est déterminée, en cas de contestation, par un expert désigné, soit par les parties, soit à défaut d’accord entre elles, par jugement du président du tribunal judiciaire ou du tribunal de commerce compétent, statuant selon la procédure accélérée au fond et sans recours possible. L’expert ainsi désigné est tenu d’appliquer, lorsqu’elles existent, les règles et modalités de détermination de la valeur prévues par les statuts de la société ou par toute convention liant les parties.” In case of dispute, value is set by an expert chosen by the parties or, failing agreement, appointed by the president of the competent court ruling under the fast-track procedure with no appeal, and that expert must apply any valuation rules found in the articles or in the parties’ agreements (Article 1843-4 of the Civil Code on Légifrance). The same article extends the expert route to cases where the articles order a transfer without any determinable value. Two consequences follow for your drafting: first, any valuation method written into a shareholders’ agreement (pacte d’associés) will bind the expert, so negotiate that method when relations are good; second, each side can walk away after seeing the expert’s figure in several statutory buyout settings, which makes the expert a price discovery tool rather than a trap, provided you know in advance whether your clause lets you withdraw.

The SAS adds its own price rule for forced transfers. The Commercial Code states: “Si les statuts ne précisent pas les modalités du prix de cession des actions lorsque la société met en oeuvre une clause introduite en application des articles L. 227-14 , L. 227-16 et L. 227-17 , ce prix est fixé par accord entre les parties ou, à défaut, déterminé dans les conditions prévues à l’article 1843-4 du code civil. Lorsque les actions sont rachetées par la société, celle-ci est tenue de les céder dans un délai de six mois ou de les annuler.” When the company enforces an approval, exclusion or change-of-control clause and the articles say nothing about price, the parties agree or the expert decides, and shares bought back by the company must be resold within six months or cancelled (Article L227-18 of the Commercial Code on Légifrance). Sellers abroad should read this as a checklist for the articles before any dispute: does your clause name a price method, does it say who pays the expert, and does it give you a right to withdraw if the figure disappoints? Silence on these points does not block the sale, but it hands the timetable and the cost to a judge.

Agreeing the price is only half the transaction; collecting it from another country is the other half. Structure payment defensively. Require a substantial deposit on signing (acompte), place deferred instalments under a bank guarantee (garantie bancaire) from a bank your counsel can actually call, and consider an escrow (séquestre) with a French notary (notaire) or lawyer’s escrow account (compte séquestre CARPA) for the balance, released against proof of registration. Insist on a liability warranty (garantie d’actif et de passif) under which the buyer can claim back part of the price if hidden liabilities surface, and mirror it with your own capped, time-limited seller’s warranty so the negotiation stays balanced. Transfer the shares themselves by account-to-account order (ordre de mouvement) recorded in the company’s share transfer register (registre des mouvements de titres), and release the payment only against a countersigned copy of that order plus updated registers. If the buyer is another foreign resident paying from abroad, fix the currency, the payer of transfer charges and the tax-gross-up rules in the deed: a price expressed in euros paid late from a dollar account can quietly shrink by several percent between signing and settlement. Finally, settle your shareholder current account in the same closing package: either the company repays your balance before completion, or the buyer takes over the debt expressly with your written consent, because an exiting shareholder who leaves an undocumented advance behind discovers later that collecting from the outside is far harder than offsetting from the inside.

II. Registration Duty, Tax and Filings: Making the Sale Stick Against Everyone

A. Paying the French Registration Duty Even When the Deed Is Signed Abroad

Every sale of shares in a French company passes through the French registration office, and distance grants no exemption. The General Tax Code opens the rule bluntly: “Les cessions de droits sociaux sont soumises à un droit d’enregistrement dont le taux est fixé : 1° A 0,1 % : – pour les actes portant cessions d’actions, de parts de fondateurs ou de parts bénéficiaires des sociétés par actions négociées sur un marché réglementé d’instruments financiers au sens de l’article L. 421-1 du code monétaire et financier ou sur un système multilatéral de négociation au sens de l’article L. 424-1 du même code ; – pour les cessions, autres que celles soumises au taux visé au 2°, d’actions, de parts de fondateurs ou de parts bénéficiaires des sociétés par actions non négociées sur un marché réglementé d’instruments financiers au sens de l’article L. 421-1 du code monétaire et financier ou sur un système multilatéral de négociation au sens de l’article L. 424-1 du même code, et de parts ou titres du capital, souscrits par les clients, des établissements de crédit mutualistes ou coopératifs.” Transfers of corporate rights pay a registration duty set at 0.1 percent for shares of unlisted joint-stock companies, which covers virtually every SAS and SA that foreign founders own (Article 726 of the General Tax Code on Légifrance). SARL shares (parts sociales) fall under a different rate set by the same article’s second bracket, so check which vehicle you are selling before telling the buyer who owes what: the duty is normally paid by the buyer, but the deed can allocate it differently, and the Treasury will collect from whoever the paperwork designates.

The provision that matters most to readers of this guide is the one aimed at deeds signed outside France: sales of shares in companies seated in France remain subject to French registration duty even when the transfer deed is executed abroad, with only a credit for duties actually paid in the buyer’s state of registration or residence (Article 726 of the General Tax Code on Légifrance). Signing abroad therefore changes the logistics, not the liability: the transfer must still be declared and the duty paid in France, through a French tax office (service des impôts des entreprises) or through your French counsel, within the statutory declaration window. Keep the foreign deed, its certified French translation and the proof of any foreign duty paid, because the credit is only as good as its paperwork. Beyond the duty itself, the capital gain on the sale (the difference between your sale price and your acquisition cost) follows its own regime: France generally taxes gains on substantial holdings in French companies even when the seller lives abroad, subject to the double-tax treaty with your country of residence, which may reserve or share the taxing right. Treaty analysis belongs before signing, not after the funds arrive, and non-resident sellers should confirm whether a fiscal representative (représentant fiscal) must be appointed for the declaration. Get the treaty memo in writing while the buyer is still at the table, because price adjustments for unexpected tax almost never happen once the shares have moved.

B. Corporate Approvals, Registers and Public Filings: Closing the File in Paris From Your Living Room

A share sale that is valid between buyer and seller can still be invisible to the company and to third parties until the corporate paperwork catches up, and French buyers’ lawyers check that paperwork before releasing a euro. Start with the company’s own registers: record the transfer in the share transfer register and update the individual shareholder accounts (comptes individuels d’associés), have the president or manager countersign the movement order, and issue the buyer a certificate (attestation de propriété de titres) matching the new registers. If the sale changes who runs the company, because you were also president of the SAS or manager (gérant) of the SARL, the change of legal representative must be filed through the Guichet unique, the single online portal operated with the INPI (the French National Institute for Industrial Property, which also runs the national companies register), and the company’s Kbis (the official identity certificate issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court) must be reissued in the new manager’s name. For Paris companies that means the greffe du tribunal de commerce de Paris. Buyers routinely make completion conditional on sight of the fresh Kbis, so file the change early and track it online rather than discovering a rejection after the funds were supposed to move.

Next, align the shareholder documentation so the company that emerges from your sale is governable. Have the shareholders’ meeting record the approval decision where one was required, update or terminate the shareholders’ agreement to release your non-compete, confidentiality and pre-emption undertakings (or keep the ones the buyer paid for), and collect board or shareholder minutes acknowledging the new shareholder. If you granted personal guarantees (cautionnements) for the company’s bank loans or leases, obtain written releases from each creditor before completion, because guarantees survive the share sale by default and a founder who forgets them remains liable for a company he no longer controls. Notify the company’s bank of the change of control with the updated Kbis and registers, confirm signing powers (pouvoirs bancaires) are revoked for you and granted to the buyer’s people, and close or transfer any personal security deposits. Where the buyer is a competitor or the deal crosses merger-control thresholds, confirm with counsel that no prior authorisation (foreign investment screening, contrôle des investissements étrangers en France, for sensitive sectors) was required; that screening applies to the buyer, but a seller who closes a prohibited deal without it shares the unwinding risk.

Finally, leave behind a file that protects you after you have gone. Keep certified copies of the signed deed, the approval decision, the movement order, the updated registers, the tax declaration and duty receipt, the bank proof of each payment received, and the releases of your guarantees, for at least the limitation periods that could bring a dispute back to you. Warranty claims under the sale deed typically run for the contractual period you negotiated, tax reassessments follow their own multi-year windows, and a buyer who discovers an undisclosed liability will write to the address in the deed. Appoint a correspondence address in France, usually your counsel’s office, for notifications after completion, and calendar the warranty expiry dates so you can release any escrowed balance or parent guarantee on time. An exit managed this way ends cleanly: the registers show the buyer, the Treasury has its duty, your guarantees are released, and the only thing that still crosses the border is the price, landing in full on the account you designated in the deed.

Conclusion

Selling your shares in a French SAS or SARL from abroad turns on three disciplines applied in order. First, respect the articles: obtain any required approval before signing, follow the notification and deadline mechanics to the letter, and remember that a transfer in breach of the articles is void while a refused SARL sale converts into an expert-priced buyout. Second, fix the price with a method that survives disagreement, from a negotiated formula to a contractual valuer to the court-appointed expert of Article 1843-4, and secure payment with deposits, guarantees or escrow rather than trust. Third, pay the French registration duty even when the deed is signed abroad, analyse the capital-gains treaty position before completion, and close every register, filing and guarantee so the company, the bank and the greffe all show the same new reality. Exits prepared this way rarely end in court; the ones that do almost always trace back to a skipped approval, an unwritten price or an unpaid duty.