The assignment of professional receivables by Dailly schedule (bordereau Dailly) is a well-known mechanism in banking law, providing credit institutions with a tool for rapid mobilisation of their receivables. However, the simplicity of the procedure does not dispense with a minimum of formal rigour. This is precisely what the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence recalled in a ruling of 23 October 2025: the assignee claiming to succeed to the rights of the assignor must be able to produce a schedule enabling the receivable claimed to be identified with certainty. Failing this, the assignee's very standing to bring proceedings is defeated.
CA Aix-en-Provence, ch. 3-3, 23 octobre 2025, n° 21/03608
The facts: a finance lease, sureties and a late assignment
The case originates from a finance lease (crédit-bail) entered into on 20 December 2005 by Mr H. with company X., covering professional equipment for a period of 60 months. This contract was transferred to company A. on 4 September 2006, with the lessor’s consent. Subsequently, Mr N. and Mr K., co-managers of SARL A., stood as joint and several sureties (cautions solidaires) for this commitment in favour of company X.
Difficulties soon followed. By judgment of 28 August 2008, the Commercial Court (tribunal de commerce) of Nice opened safeguard proceedings (procédure de sauvegarde) in respect of company A. The court-appointed administrator subsequently notified the bank of the contract’s termination, whereupon the bank filed its unsecured claim in the collective proceedings. By judgment of 17 March 2011, the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence admitted this claim against the liabilities of SARL A. in the amount of 29,999.17 euros.
After multiple formal demands that went unanswered, the sureties were summoned for payment before the tribunal de grande instance of Nice. By judgment of 23 October 2020, the court found the surety commitments of both Mr N. and Mr K. to be disproportionate and held that company X. could not rely upon them. The bank lodged an appeal.
At this point, a new element emerged: in its latest submissions before the Court of Appeal, it was no longer company X. that was acting, but SAS Y. France, claiming to succeed to its rights by virtue of an assignment of receivables dated 20 December 2022. It was precisely this substitution that crystallised the debate.
The challenge to the assignee’s standing to sue
Mr N. raised the inadmissibility of SAS Y.’s claims by challenging the reality of the alleged assignment of receivables. His arguments were numerous and detailed.
The document produced by the assignee mentioned neither the amount nor the number of assigned receivables, nor the face value of the receivable in question, nor even the SIRET number of the debtor company. As the surety pointed out, numerous companies bearing the same name existed, making identification hazardous at best. Furthermore, the document was merely a partial copy in which the sureties did not appear at any point.
Doubts were also expressed regarding the actual date of the assignment : the lawyer for company X. had requested the case be scheduled for the benefit of his client on 5 February 2024, more than a year after the assignment allegedly made in December 2022. Finally, the assignment had never been notified to Mr N.
SAS Y., for its part, maintained that the extract produced was sufficient: the parties were clearly identified therein, the references to the deed were specified, and the mention of the assigned contract number demonstrated, in its view, that the disputed receivable was indeed included within the scope of the assignment.
The legal framework: Article L. 313-23 of the French Monetary and Financial Code
To resolve this dispute, the court begins by recalling the applicable regulatory framework. Article L. 313-23 of the French Monetary and Financial Code, in the version applicable to the case, authorises a credit institution to assign its receivables by the mere delivery of a schedule, including where the amount and enforceability of the receivable have not yet been determined.
However, this provision subjects the schedule to mandatory particulars, without which the document does not constitute a valid assignment deed. These mandatory particulars include the designation “acte de cession de créances professionnelles” (deed of assignment of professional receivables), the reference to Articles L. 313-23 to L. 313-34, the name of the beneficiary institution, and above all — the central point of the ruling — the designation or individualisation of the assigned receivables, notably by indicating the debtor, the place of payment, the amount of the receivables or their valuation.
The provision does allow for flexibility when the transfer is carried out by electronic means: the schedule may then be limited to indicating the means of transmission, the number and the total amount of the receivables. However, even in this scenario, in the event of a challenge, the assignee must be able to prove by any means that the disputed receivable is included in the total amount shown on the schedule.
The court also recalls, pursuant to Article L. 313-27 of the same Code, that an assignment by Dailly schedule takes effect between the parties and becomes enforceable against third parties on the date affixed to the schedule, without any further formality being required. The purpose of notification, in accordance with Article L. 313-28, is merely to prohibit the debtor from making payment to the assignor.
It follows that notification of the assignment to the sureties is not a condition of its enforceability. On the other hand, it is incumbent upon the assignee who intends to rely on the assignment against a third party — and the sureties are indeed third parties to this deed — to prove its existence by producing a valid schedule.
Examination of the documents: irreconcilable pages
It is here that the ruling takes on its full practical significance. SAS Y. produced only a single document to support its standing to sue, consisting of two pages.
The first page, entitled “assignment of receivable” (cession de créance), specified that it covered finance lease, financial leasing and professional equipment credit receivables. It was dated 20 December 2020 and electronically signed by the assignor (company X.) and the assignee (SAS Y.). However, no mention of the assigned receivables appeared therein : the spaces provided for the number and amount of receivables were blank.
The second page, presented as the “list of assigned receivables” (liste des créances cédées), did mention the disputed contract concerning company A. on line 181. However, this page bore neither the name of the assignor nor that of the assignee.
However, nothing made it possible to link the second page to the first. While the first was numbered “44”, the second bore no numbering whatsoever. Even more crucially, the electronic signature references of the two documents were entirely different, ruling out the possibility that they had been signed as part of the same deed.
The court drew an unequivocal conclusion: it was not possible to identify, on the basis of these documents, the receivable held by company X. against SARL A. — secured by the suretyships of Messrs N. and K. — as forming part of the receivables assigned to SAS Y. The latter failed to establish both the materiality of the assignment and its standing to sue.
The ruling: inadmissibility of the assignee’s claims
The court clarifies an important point, however: no provision requires full or original communication of the assignment contract. The assignee is therefore not required to produce the assignment deed in its entirety, nor even its original. However, what is produced must at least enable a link to be established between the schedule and the claimed receivable.
In this case, the impossibility of linking the page containing the list of receivables to the signed schedule rendered the entire set of documents unfit to establish the alleged assignment. The first-instance judgment was reversed and the claims of SAS Y. were declared inadmissible for lack of standing to sue.
Practical lessons from the decision
This ruling is significant in several respects.
Firstly, it recalls that the formalism of the Dailly schedule, while simplified compared to the ordinary rules governing assignment of receivables, remains nonetheless a formalism going to validity. The mandatory particulars of Article L. 313-23 of the French Monetary and Financial Code are not mere recommendations: their absence deprives the document of its value as a deed of assignment.
Secondly, the decision highlights a practical difficulty with large-scale portfolio assignments of receivables. When a debt recovery fund acquires a substantial volume of receivables from a banking institution, the temptation is strong to produce only partial extracts of the assignment schedule in court. However, if these extracts do not establish a material link between the signed schedule and the list of individually identified receivables, the assignee exposes itself to outright rejection of its claims.
Thirdly, the ruling illustrates the importance for sureties of systematically challenging the assignee’s standing to sue when a substitution occurs during proceedings. This defence strategy, based on procedural grounds, can prove remarkably effective, as the outcome of this case demonstrates.
Finally, the observation that the electronic signature of each of the two pages bore different references constitutes a particularly modern element of assessment. The court here demonstrates a welcome attentiveness to the technical characteristics of digital documents, confirming that dematerialisation does not dispense with documentary consistency.
CA Aix-en-Provence, ch. 3-3, 23 octobre 2025, n° 21/03608
