S.A. or SA designates a type of public company in certain countries, most of which have a Romance language as its official language and employ civil law. An SA is roughly equivalent to a public limited company in United Kingdom company law and a public company in United States corporate law. Originally, shareholders could be literally anonymous and collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates. Dividends were therefore paid to whoever held the certificate. Share certificates could be transferred privately, and therefore the management of the company would not necessarily know who owned its shares.