private limited liabilitylimited liability

What is “DAC”?

DAC (Designated activity company with limited liability) is a private limited liability company used primarily in Ireland. It signals limited liability and private ownership.

Where it's used

DAC appears in company names registered in the following jurisdiction:

IE · Ireland

What it tells you about the company

LiabilityOwners' liability is limited to their capital contribution. Personal assets are protected.
OwnershipPrivately held. Shares are not listed or traded on a public exchange.
ComparableBroadly equivalent to LLC in United States, Ltd in United Kingdom, Co in United States.

Equivalent forms around the world

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

CountryEquivalent suffix
United StatesLLC
United KingdomLtd
United StatesCo
GermanyGmbH
FranceSrl
FranceSAS
FranceEURL
United StatesGK
United StatesLC
United StatesLLLC
FranceSASU
GermanyUG
United StatesТОО

Normalizing “DAC” in your data

When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — Acme DAC” 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 DAC", "country": "ie"}'
Response
{
  "data": {
    "canonical": "acme dac",
    "legal_type": null,
    "tokens": [
      "acme",
      "dac"
    ]
  },
  "meta": {
    "pipeline": [
      "lowercase",
      "legal_suffix"
    ],
    "confidence": 0.99
  }
}

Frequently asked questions

What does DAC mean?

DAC means "Designated activity company with limited liability".

Is a DAC public or private?

A DAC is a private entity — its shares are not publicly listed or traded on a stock exchange.

What is the liability in a DAC?

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

Which countries use DAC?

DAC is used in Ireland.

Is a DAC the same as a LLC?

Functionally comparable — both are private limited liability company forms — but they operate under different national laws with distinct formation, capital, and governance requirements.

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

Try the live normalizer free →