Counterparty — France: step by step

This register is public and free of charge. What the fixed-price report covers is the removed path: locating the correct SIREN, navigating language and document format, cross-referencing BODACC publications against the RNE record, and delivering a structured analysis in English within a defined timeline.

Control in a French entity is not always visible at the first layer. The legal representative named in the RNE may be a nominee. The actual decision-making structure — voting rights, reserved matters, drag-along clauses — lives in the shareholders agreement and the statuts, neither of which is fully public. This report establishes what the official sources confirm, names the layer at which the chain stops, and states explicitly what remains unverifiable from public records.

The Registre National des Entreprises (RNE), maintained by INPI, is the central reference for French legal entities. It records the legal form, registered address, share capital, date of incorporation, and the identity of legal representatives (gérant, président, directeur général). Data is accessible via INPI's open API and the data.inpi.fr portal.

BODACC — the Bulletin Officiel des Annonces Civiles et Commerciales — publishes every court-ordered event affecting a French company: incorporation, modification of statuts, transfer of registered office, opening of insolvency proceedings, and deposit of annual accounts. BODACC records are searchable by SIREN from 2008 onward, free of charge, with an Open Data API and alert functionality.

Together, these two sources answer four questions before a shareholders agreement is signed:

• Is the entity validly incorporated and in what legal form?
• Who is named as legal representative at the date of the search?
• Have annual accounts been filed, and what do they show?
• Is any insolvency or restructuring procedure open or recently closed?

The RNE names the legal representative. In a SARL, the gérant is identified. In an SAS — the most common form for venture-backed and family-held companies — the président is named, but the statuts define who can appoint and remove that président. Those statuts are filed with the greffe but are not always fully reproduced in the public extract.

Shareholder identity is disclosed in SARL structures through the Gesellschafterliste equivalent (liste des associés in the statuts). In SAS structures, there is no statutory obligation to file a current shareholder list with the greffe. The RNE does not show a live cap table for an SAS.

Beneficial ownership beyond the legal representative layer is not publicly accessible in France following the CJEU ruling in joined cases C-37/20 and C-601/20. The Registre des bénéficiaires effectifs (RBE) exists and is maintained, but public access has been restricted. Access requires demonstration of a legitimate interest and is subject to administrative procedure.

This means the counterparty verification report for a French entity establishes:

• The legal representative at the date of extraction
• The legal form and its governance implications
• Filed financial statements (unless the entity has exercised the confidentiality option available to small companies)
• Any open or recent insolvency, safeguard, or redressement judiciaire procedure
• The date and content of the last modification published in BODACC

It does not establish the full shareholder structure of an SAS, the identity of beneficial owners, or the content of any shareholders agreement.

French companies are required to deposit annual accounts with the greffe du tribunal de commerce. INPI makes these available through its open data service. The coverage is substantial: most SA, SARL, and SAS entities above the small-company threshold have at least one set of filed accounts accessible.

Two limitations apply. First, small companies (below the thresholds set by Article L. 232-25 of the Code de commerce) may elect confidentiality for their income statement. The balance sheet remains public; the profit-and-loss account does not. Second, very recently incorporated entities or entities that have not yet reached their first filing deadline will have no accounts on record.

The report notes explicitly which years are available, which are missing, and whether the confidentiality option appears to have been exercised.

BODACC publishes the opening of every procedure under French insolvency law: sauvegarde, redressement judiciaire, liquidation judiciaire, and rétablissement professionnel. Publications are searchable by SIREN from 2008. The search returns PDF announcements with the date of the court order, the name of the administrator, and the type of procedure.

A negative result — no BODACC publication found — does not guarantee that no procedure has been filed. A petition may have been submitted but not yet published. The report states the date of the search and notes that the result reflects publications available at that date.

Alert functionality on bodacc.fr allows monitoring of a SIREN for future publications. This is outside the scope of a point-in-time report but is noted as an available tool.

The four sources above — RNE, BODACC, INPI comptes annuels, and the RCS — represent the ceiling of what official French public records show to a foreign requester without a court order or administrative access.

The following cannot be established from these sources:

• The identity of shareholders in an SAS beyond what appears in the statuts extract
• The content of any shareholders agreement (pacte d'actionnaires), which is a private contract
• The identity of beneficial owners, given restricted access to the RBE post-CJEU ruling
• Personal addresses of directors (restricted by Décret 2025-840)
• Whether a petition for insolvency has been filed but not yet published in BODACC
• The existence of pledges over shares (nantissement de parts) unless registered and published

The report names the layer at which the chain stops. It does not speculate beyond what the sources confirm.