The abbreviation S.A. or SA designates a type of limited company in certain countries, most of which have a Romance language as their official language and operates a derivative of the 1804, Napoleonic, civil law . Originally, shareholders could be anonymous and collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates . Dividends were paid to whomever held the certificate. Since share certificates could be transferred privately, corporate management would not necessarily know who owned its shares – nor did anyone but the holders.
8-402: As with bearer bonds , anonymous unregistered share ownership and dividend collection enabled money laundering , tax evasion , and concealed business transactions in general, so governments passed laws to audit the practice. Nowadays, shareholders of S.A.s are not anonymous, though shares can still be held by a holding company to obscure the beneficiary. S.A. can be an abbreviation of: "SA"
16-402: Is a bond or debt security issued by a government or a business entity such as a corporation. As a bearer instrument , it differs from the more common types of investment securities in that it is unregistered—no records are kept of the owner, or the transactions involving ownership. Whoever physically holds the paper on which the bond is issued is the presumptive owner of the instrument . This
24-483: Is part of the name of lots of corporations named after an acronym : some examples are Cepsa , originally Compañía Española de Petróleos, Sociedad Anónima , "Spanish petroleum company, S.A."; Sabena , originally Societé anonyme belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation aérienne , "Belgian S.A. of exploitation of air navigation". It is equivalent in literal meaning and function to: It is equivalent in function to: Bearer bond A bearer bond or bearer note
32-532: Is useful for investors who wish to remain anonymous. Recovery of the value of a bearer bond in the event of its loss, theft, or destruction is usually impossible. Some relief is possible in the case of United States public debt . Furthermore, while all bond types state maturity dates and interest rates, bearer bond coupons for interest payments are physically attached to the security and must be submitted to an authorized agent in order to receive payment. Issuance of new bearer bonds has been effectively outlawed in
40-723: The US Treasury had matured as of May 2016, with approximately $ 87 million yet to be redeemed as of March 2020. From 2009 to 2012, a series of incidents involving the forgery and smuggling of U.S. bearer bonds in Italy and Switzerland occurred, beginning with the Chiasso financial smuggling case in June 2009, in which Italian financial police and customs guards seized documents purporting to be U.S. bearer bonds totaling $ 134.5 billion in Chiasso, Switzerland, on
48-631: The Italian border. The bonds were readily determined to be phony: the latest in a series of "billion-dollar bond" schemes that the United States Treasury calls "Morganthaus". In the United States, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 substantially curtailed the issue of debt in bearer form: it also disallowed any tax deduction of interest paid on any such bonds issued after 1982 by
56-466: The United States since the 1980s due to their use in illegal activities, but bearer bonds issued before this date can be redeemed if the issuer still exists. Bearer bonds have been traced back as far as 1648, but there was a spike in popularity in the United States for these bonds during the Civil War, as government resources were strained and limited. Following the success and ease of transferring funds in
64-415: The United States, Europe and South America also started issuing this type of bond. The main appeal of bearer bonds is anonymity, which led them to become the financial instrument of choice for unlawful activity including money laundering , tax evasion and drug trafficking. In response, new issuances of bearer bonds have been severely curtailed in the United States since 1982. All bearer bonds issued by
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