Frenchlimited partnershipmixed liability

What is “SCA”?

SCA stands for Société en commandite par actions (French), a limited partnership used primarily in Angola, Argentina, Belgium. The suffix signals that the business has mixed liability and is privately held.

Full meaning & translation

The full form is Société en commandite par actions, a French-language term. It translates literally as “Partnership limited by shares.” You may also encounter it abbreviated or written as comandita por acciones, comandita por acciones de cv, comm va, commanditaire vennootschap op aandelen.

Where it's used

SCA appears in company names registered in the following 16 jurisdictions:

AO · AngolaAR · ArgentinaBE · BelgiumBR · BrazilCL · ChileCO · ColombiaDO · Dominican RepublicDZ · AlgeriaES · SpainFR · FranceMA · MoroccoMX · MexicoPE · PeruRO · RomaniaTN · TunisiaUY · Uruguay

What it tells you about the company

LiabilityMixed: general partners bear unlimited liability; limited partners are protected up to their invested capital.
OwnershipPrivately held. Shares are not listed or traded on a public exchange.
ComparableBroadly equivalent to GmbH & Co. KG in Germany, &CA in Brazil, AGKGAA in Germany.

Equivalent forms around the world

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

CountryEquivalent suffix
GermanyGmbH & Co. KG
Brazil&CA
GermanyAGKGAA
GermanyAKGK
MexicoCV
GermanyGBHKGA
GermanyGBHKGAA
United KingdomGPLP
United KingdomILP
GermanyKEG
GermanyKG
GermanyKGAA
United KingdomLP
GermanyNFKGKG
United StatesP
GermanyPR
FranceSCS
FranceSELACA
United KingdomSLP

Normalizing “SCA” in your data

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

Frequently asked questions

What does SCA stand for?

SCA stands for Société en commandite par actions (French), which translates as "Partnership limited by shares".

Is a SCA public or private?

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

What is the liability in a SCA?

Liability in a SCA is mixed. General partners bear unlimited liability while limited partners are protected up to their capital contribution.

Which countries use SCA?

SCA is used in Angola, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil and 12 other countries.

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

Try the live normalizer free →