The Bureaucracies of Company Ownership in France

“A company's responsibility is to increase profit.” This idea has motivated a lot of entrepreneurs towards company formation. However, for a business to be successful, a person or group of persons must invest time, money, assets, and/or personal skill towards the development of the business idea. As businesses expand and become more profitable, it will be fair for these persons who have invested towards the success of the business to have the absolute freedom to control the business as they wish. For registered companies, this is not the case. The mode of structuring and organising of a company is defined by the French Commercial Code, the French Civil Code and the bylaws of the company . This means that regardless of how much a person has invested, such a person is still subject to rules and guidelines for the running of the company. Arguably, this could be the reason for the growing popularity of other forms of business as compared to registered companies. This paper analyses the bureaucracies associated with the structuring and organising of companies under the French Legal system. It is divided into two parts. The first part of this paper discusses business formation and the corporate standards that affect the running of the business while the second part discusses the purpose of government-imposed regulations to the corporate structure