French resident director in 2024

Although the French Companies Act, does not require a local company to have a director to ordinarily reside in France, some of our Clients request Healy Consultants Group to provide a resident director to fulfil the licensing conditions and requirements as may be set by different financial institution such as acquiring banks or payment processors. Healy Consultants Group business owner, Mr. Aidan Healy, who is Irish national and permanent resident of South of France, will act as the resident director of our Client’s French company.

Resident director litigation, financial and reputation risk

• Acting as a resident director for our Clients’ companies makes Healy Consultants Group vulnerable to financial, litigation, and reputational risks:
  • In case a company fails to file its annual returns and annual general meeting documents on time, the resident director is liable to pay the corresponding penalties and attend to court summons on behalf of the company;
  • The resident director is answerable to the IRAS in case of unpaid taxes or inaccurate tax reporting by our Clients’ companies. The tax liabilities of one director of a French LLC are also transferred to the other directors in case their taxes are unpaid;
  • Any breach of law by our Clients’ companies can result in disqualification for Healy Consultants Group and Aidan Healy;
  • If a company is in violation of the AML-CFT laws, its officers are liable to pay a fine of €375,000 and five years of imprisonment and the company is liable to pay a fine of €1, 875,000 million.
  • Because of the above, we require our Clients to strictly adhere to the set down laws and fulfil annual filing obligations to ensure the Client’s company is not in contravention of the local company’s law.

Fees

• Our standard French nominee resident director fee is €5,950 per year for low-risk business activities. Our fees have been revised over the years to:
  • Account for the increasing legal responsibility of being a resident director for an international Client’s French company;
  • Mitigate the financial liability of acting as a resident director for our Clients’ companies, especially if all other company officers reside overseas;
  • Compensate for the stricter representative obligations imposed on a company’s resident director, for instance, appearing in court on the Client’s behalf;
  • Protect our client from additional administrative burden.
• For medium and high-risk business activities, our Firm will determine our fee after careful review of corporate and individual due diligence documents by our legal and compliance department;
• Healy Consultants does not normally allow Clients to pay Singapore resident director fees by instalments. We normally require full payment up front for the year. However, we may consider half-yearly payments for companies in good standing.

Terms and conditions of the appointment

• In accordance with the French Companies Act, a French Company doesn’t require its director to ordinarily reside in France;
• If required, Mr. Aidan Healy will act as the resident director for our Client’s French company, if our Clients have difficulties finding a resident director of their own;
• Our Resident Directors cannot be appointed as sole director to the company. Therefore, our Client still needs to appoint an international director, who will be involved in daily company activities and sign the documents on behalf of the Firm;
• To ensure your assets are fully protected, our professional passive nominee director will neither be a bank signatory nor play an active role in the daily corporate activities of the company, in the capacity of a resident director;
• When appointing Healy Consultants Group as nominee resident director for their French company, we will exclusively act as a passive director and will sign company financial statements and company documents prepared by our in-house Legal and Compliance Department;
• Should our Client require Mr. Aidan Healy to act as the French nominee resident director to sign documents, an additional fee may apply due to increased financial, reputational and litigation risk that the signatory may face;
• If our Client requests our Resident Director to visit banks for account opening process, our charge is €2,950. Moreover, our Client need to bear all costs raised from the visits including but not limited to flights and hotels. The Resident Director will provide all official invoices for the same;
• To protect the interests of the parties involved, our Clients enter into a nominee resident director agreement with Healy Consultants Group, highlighting the terms and conditions of being a passive director (please refer to the sample agreement for more details).