Company types
The legal form determines how a company is incorporated, who answers for its debts and what minimum capital it needs. These are the 9 forms recognized by the Ecuadorian corporate registry.
- Registered companies
- 222,524
- Active
- 181,365
- Legal forms
- 9
- The most common
- 42%
The changing of the guard
The simplified stock company (S.A.S.) was born with the Ley Orgánica de Emprendimiento e Innovación, published on February 28, 2020: no minimum capital, a single shareholder allowed, online incorporation. In five years it displaced the stock corporation as the preferred form: 92,615 incorporated against 90,248 stock corporations over the same period.
See the full series
- 2019
- 61
- 2020
- 3.3 k
- 2021
- 9.6 k
- 2022
- 14.2 k
- 2023
- 16.1 k
- 2024
- 16.3 k
- 2025
- 18.7 k
- 2026
- 13.8 k
See the full series
- 2019
- 5.8 k
- 2020
- 4.0 k
- 2021
- 3.1 k
- 2022
- 2.4 k
- 2023
- 1.9 k
- 2024
- 1.5 k
- 2025
- 1.8 k
- 2026
- 865
Only companies still on the registry are counted: distant years are missing the ones already cancelled, and the latest year is still in progress.
The legal framework
The classic forms come from the Ley de Compañías, first enacted in 1964 and consolidated in 1999 (Registro Oficial 312, November 5). The stock corporation requires a minimum capital of $800 divided into freely tradable shares. The limited liability company asks for $400, admits up to 15 partners, and transferring ownership interests to third parties requires the unanimous consent of the capital.
The S.A.S. broke that mold: the Ley Orgánica de Emprendimiento e Innovación (Registro Oficial supplement 151, February 28, 2020) created it with no minimum capital, a single shareholder and no notary, and the Superintendencia enabled online incorporation from May 2020. The corporate reform of March 2023 (Registro Oficial supplement 269) extended part of that flexibility to the rest: stock corporations and limited liability companies may now have a single owner, more filings skip the notary, and the RUC (the taxpayer number) of a new company must be issued within 24 hours.
All legal forms
- Simplified stock company (S.A.S.) 92,452 · 42% 87,944 active
- Stock corporation (S.A.) 90,153 · 41% 64,939 active
- Limited liability company (Cía. Ltda.) 38,346 · 17% 27,746 active
- Branch of a foreign company 1,323 · 1% 703 active
- Association or consortium 142 · 0% 0 active
- Mixed-economy company 53 · 0% 20 active
- Stock corporation on rural land 46 · 0% 8 active
- Andean multinational corporation 7 · 0% 4 active
- Partnership limited by shares 2 · 0% 1 active
Corporate information from official public records of Ecuador · where this data comes from