public limited liabilitylimited liability

What is “SEM”?

SEM (Company of mixed economy) is a public limited liability company used primarily in Côte d’Ivoire, France, Morocco. It signals limited liability and potential public listing.

Where it's used

SEM appears in company names registered in the following 3 jurisdictions:

CI · Côte d’IvoireFR · FranceMA · Morocco

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 SEM in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.

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

Normalizing “SEM” in your data

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

Frequently asked questions

What does SEM mean?

SEM means "Company of mixed economy".

Is a SEM public or private?

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

What is the liability in a SEM?

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

Which countries use SEM?

SEM is used in Côte d’Ivoire, France, Morocco.

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

Try the live normalizer free →