public limited liabilitylimited liability

What is “AE”?

AE (anonymous company) is a public limited liability company used primarily in France, Greece. It signals limited liability and potential public listing.

Where it's used

AE appears in company names registered in the following 2 jurisdictions:

FR · FranceGR · Greece

What it tells you about the company

LiabilityOwners' liability is limited to their capital contribution. Personal assets are protected.
OwnershipMay issue publicly traded shares listed on a stock exchange.
ComparableBroadly equivalent to Corp in United States, AG in Germany, SA in France.

Equivalent forms around the world

These are the closest structural equivalents to AE in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.

CountryEquivalent suffix
United StatesCorp
GermanyAG
FranceSA
GreeceABEE
GermanyAGKGA
GermanyAKGKA
GermanyCOAG
GermanyINVAG
GermanyKGA
United KingdomPLC
GermanyREITAG
GermanySE
GermanySE*
FranceSEM
FranceSICAF
FranceSICAV
FranceSPA
United KingdomULTD

Normalizing “AE” in your data

When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — Acme AE” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:

Request
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "Acme AE", "country": "fr"}'
Response
{
  "data": {
    "canonical": "acme ae",
    "legal_type": null,
    "tokens": [
      "acme",
      "ae"
    ]
  },
  "meta": {
    "pipeline": [
      "lowercase",
      "legal_suffix"
    ],
    "confidence": 0.99
  }
}

Frequently asked questions

What does AE mean?

AE means "anonymous company".

Is a AE public or private?

A AE is a public entity — it can issue shares that are listed and traded on a stock exchange.

What is the liability in a AE?

Owners of a AE have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.

Which countries use AE?

AE is used in France, Greece.

Need to normalize AE at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.

Try the live normalizer free →