Corporation

A corporation is a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity

(legally a person) and recognized as such in law. Early incorporated entities were
established by charter (i.e. by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a
parliament or legislature). Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new
corporations through registration.

Corporations come in many different types but are usually divided by the law of the
jurisdiction where they are chartered into two kinds: by whether they can issue stock
or not, or by whether they are formed to make aprofit or not.[1]
McDonald's Corporationis one of
the most recognizable corporations
Where local law distinguishes corporations by the ability to issue stock, corporations
in the world.
allowed to do so are referred to as "stock corporations", ownership of the corporation
is through stock, and owners of stock are referred to as "stockholders" or
"shareholders". Corporations not allowed to issue stock are referred to as "non-stock" corporations; those who are considered the
owners of a non-stock corporation are persons (or other entities) who have obtained membership in the corporation and are referred
to as a "member" of the corporation.

Corporations chartered in regions where they are distinguished by whether they are allowed to be for profit or not are referred to as
"for profit" and "not-for-profit" corporations, respectively.

There is some overlap between stock/non-stock and for

-profit/not-for-profit in that not-for-profit corporations are always non-stock as
well. A for-profit corporation is almost always a stock corporation, but some for-profit corporations may choose to be non-stock. To
simplify the explanation, whenever "Stockholder" or "Shareholder" is used in the rest of this article to refer to a stock corporation, it
is presumed to mean the same as "member" for a non-profit corporation or for a profit, non-stock corporation.

Registered corporations have legal personality and are owned by shareholders[2][3] whose liability is generally limited to their
investment. Shareholders do not typically actively manage a corporation; shareholders instead elect or appoint a board of directors to
control the corporation in a fiduciary capacity. In most circumstances, a shareholder may also serve as a director or officer of a
corporation.

In American English, the word corporation is most often used to describe large business corporations.[4] In British English and in the
Commonwealth countries, the term company is more widely used to describe the same sort of entity while the word corporation
encompasses all incorporated entities. In American English, the word company can include entities such as partnerships that would
not be referred to as companies in British English as they are not aseparate legal entity.

Despite not being individual human beings, corporations, as far as US law is concerned, are
legal persons, and have many of the same
rights and responsibilities as natural persons do. For example, a corporation can own property, and can sue or be sued. Corporations
can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state,[5][6] and they can themselves be responsible for human rights
violations.[7] Corporations can be "dissolved" either by statutory operation, order of court, or voluntary action on the part of
shareholders. Insolvency may result in a form of corporate failure, when creditors force the liquidation and dissolution of the
corporation under court order,[8] but it most often results in a restructuring of corporate holdings. Corporations can even be convicted
of criminal offenses, such as fraud and manslaughter. However, corporations are not considered living entities in the way that humans
are.[9]

Late in the 19th century, a new form of company having the limited liability protections of a corporation, and the more favorable tax
treatment of either a sole proprietorship or partnership was developed. While not a corporation, this new type of entity became very
attractive as an alternative for corporations not needing to issue stock. In Germany, the organization was referred to as Gesellschaft
mit beschränkter Haftung or GmbH. In the last quarter of the 20th Century this new form of non-corporate organization became
available in the United States and other countries, and was known as the limited liability companyor LLC. Since the GmbH and LLC
forms of organization are technically not corporations (even though they have many of the same features), they will not be discussed
in this article.

Contents
History
Mercantilism
Modern company law
Deregulation
Limited liability
Further developments

Ownership and control

Formation
Naming
See also
Notes
Further reading
External links

History
The word "corporation" derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a "body of
people". By the time of Justinian (reigned 527–565), Roman law recognized a range
of corporate entities under the names universities, corpus or collegium. These
included the state itself (the Populus Romanus), municipalities, and such private
associations as sponsors of a religious cult, burial clubs, political groups, and guilds
of craftsmen or traders. Such bodies commonly had the right to own property and
make contracts, to receive gifts and legacies, to sue and be sued, and, in general, to
perform legal acts through representatives. Private associations were granted
.[10]
designated privileges and liberties by the emperor
1/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg
Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of legal rights were found mine, dated June 16, 1288.
in ancient Rome, and the Maurya Empire in ancient India.[11] In medieval Europe,
churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope and the
City of London Corporation. The point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member,
existing in perpetuity. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun,
Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347.

In medieval times, traders would do business through common law constructs, such as partnerships. Whenever people acted together
with a view to profit, the law deemed that a partnership arose. Early guilds and livery companies were also often involved in the
regulation of competitionbetween traders.

Mercantilism
The progenitors of the modern corporation were the chartered companies, such as the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the
Hudson's Bay Company, which were created to lead the colonial ventures of European nations in the 17th century. Acting under a
charter sanctioned by the Dutch government, the Dutch East India Company defeated Portuguese forces and established itself in the
Moluccan Islands in order to profit from the European demand for spices. Investors
in the VOC have issued paper certificates as proof of share ownership, and were able
to trade their shares on the original Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Shareholders are
also explicitly grantedlimited liability in the company's royal charter.[12]

In England, the government created corporations under a royal charter or an Act of

Parliament with the grant of a monopoly over a specified territory. The best-known
example, established in 1600, was the East India Company of London. Queen
Elizabeth I granted it the exclusive right to trade with all countries to the east of the
Cape of Good Hope. Some corporations at this time would act on the government's
behalf, bringing in revenue from its exploits abroad. Subsequently, the Company A bond issued by the Dutch East
India Company, dating from 1623, for
became increasingly integrated with English and later British military and colonial
the amount of 2,400 florins
policy, just as most corporations were essentially dependent on the Royal Navy's
ability to control trade routes.

Labeled by both contemporaries and historians as "the grandest society of merchants in the universe", the English East India
Company would come to symbolize the dazzlingly rich potential of the corporation, as well as new methods of business that could be
both brutal and exploitative.[13] On 31 December 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted the company a 15-year monopoly on trade to and
from the East Indies and Africa.[14] By 1711, shareholders in the East India Company were earning a return on their investment of
almost 150 per cent. Subsequent stock offerings demonstrated just how lucrative the Company had become. Its first stock offering in
[15]
1713–1716 raised £418,000, its second in 1717–1722 raised £1.6 million.

A similar chartered company, the South Sea Company, was established in 1711 to
trade in the Spanish South American colonies, but met with less success. The South
Sea Company's monopoly rights were supposedly backed by the Treaty of Utrecht,
signed in 1713 as a settlement following the War of the Spanish Succession, which
gave Great Britain an asiento to trade in the region for thirty years. In fact the
Spanish remained hostile and let only one ship a year enter. Unaware of the
problems, investors in Britain, enticed by extravagant promises of profit from
company promoters bought thousands of shares. By 1717, the South Sea Company
was so wealthy (still having done no real business) that it assumed the public debt of
the British government. This accelerated the inflation of the share price further, as
did the Bubble Act 1720, which (possibly with the motive of protecting the South
Sea Company from competition) prohibited the establishment of any companies
without a Royal Charter. The share price rose so rapidly that people began buying
shares merely in order to sell them at a higher price, which in turn led to higher share
Chart of the South Sea Company's
stock prices. The rapid inflation of the prices. This was the first speculative bubble the country had seen, but by the end of
stock value in the 1710s led to the 1720, the bubble had "burst", and the share price sank from £1000 to under £100. As
Bubble Act 1720, which restricted the bankruptcies and recriminations ricocheted through government and high society,
establishment of companies without the mood against corporations, and errant directors was bitter
.
a royal charter.
In the late 18th century, Stewart Kyd, the author of the first treatise on corporate law
in English, defined a corporation as:

a collection of many individuals united into one body, under a special denomination, having perpetual succession
under an artificial form, and vested, by policy of the law, with the capacity of acting, in several respects, as an
individual, particularly of taking and granting property, of contracting obligations, and of suing and being sued, of
enjoying privileges and immunities in common, and of exercising a variety of political rights, more or less extensive,
according to the design of its institution, or the powers conferred upon it, either at the time of its creation, or at any
subsequent period of its existence.
 — A Treatise on the Law of Corporations, Stewart Kyd (1793–1794)

Modern company law

Due to the late 18th century abandonment of mercantilist economic theory and the rise of classical liberalism and laissez-faire
economic theory due to a revolution in economics led by Adam Smith and other economists, corporations transitioned from being
government or guild affiliated entities to being public and private economic entities free of governmental directions.[16]

Adam Smith wrote in his 1776 work The Wealth of Nations that mass corporate activity could not match private entrepreneurship,
[17]
because people in charge of others' money wouldnot exercise as much care as they would with their own.

Deregulation
The British Bubble Act 1720's prohibition on establishing companies remained in
force until its repeal in 1825. By this point, the Industrial Revolution had gathered
pace, pressing for legal change to facilitate business activity.[18] The repeal was the
beginning of a gradual lifting on restrictions, though business ventures (such as
those chronicled by Charles Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit) under primitive
companies legislation were often scams. Without cohesive regulation, proverbial
operations like the "Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance
Company" were undercapitalised ventures promising no hope of success except for
richly paid promoters.[19]

The process of incorporation was possible only through a royal charter or a private
act and was limited, owing to Parliament's jealous protection of the privileges and
advantages thereby granted. As a result, many businesses came to be operated as
unincorporated associations with possibly thousands of members. Any consequent
litigation had to be carried out in the joint names of all the members and was almost "Jack and the Giant Joint-Stock", a
impossibly cumbersome. Though Parliament would sometimes grant a private act to cartoon in Town Talk (1858) satirizing
allow an individual to represent the whole in legal proceedings, this was a narrow the 'monster' joint-stock economy
and necessarily costly expedient, allowed only to established companies. that came into being after theJoint
Stock Companies Act 1844.
Then, in 1843, William Gladstone became the chairman of a Parliamentary
Committee on Joint Stock Companies, which led to the Joint Stock Companies Act
1844, regarded as the first modern piece of company law.[20] The Act created the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies, empowered to
register companies by a two-stage process. The first, provisional, stage cost £5 and did not confer corporate status, which arose after
completing the second stage for another £5. For the first time in history, it was possible for ordinary people through a simple
registration procedure to incorporate.[21] The advantage of establishing a company as a separate legal person was mainly
administrative, as a unified entity under which the rights and duties of all investors and managers could be channeled.

Limited liability
However, there was still no limited liability and company members could still be held responsible for unlimited losses by the
company.[22] The next, crucial development, then, was theLimited Liability Act 1855, passed at the behest of the then Vice President
of the Board of Trade, Mr. Robert Lowe. This allowed investors to limit their liability in the event of business failure to the amount
they invested in the company – shareholders were still liable directly to creditors, but just for the unpaid portion of their shares. (The
principle that shareholders are liable to the corporation had been introduced in the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844).

The 1855 Act allowed limited liability to companies of more than 25 members (shareholders). Insurance companies were excluded
from the act, though it was standard practice for insurance contracts to exclude action against individual members. Limited liability
for insurance companies was allowed by theCompanies Act 1862.
This prompted the English periodicalThe Economist to write in 1855 that "never, perhaps, was a change so vehemently and generally
demanded, of which the importance was so much overrated. "[23] The major error of this judgment was recognised by the same
magazine more than 70 years later, when it claimed that, "[t]he economic historian of the future. . . may be inclined to assign to the
nameless inventor of the principle of limited liability, as applied to trading corporations, a place of honour with Watt and Stephenson,
and other pioneers of the Industrial Revolution. [24]
"

These two features – a simple registration procedure and limited liability – were subsequently codified into the landmark 1856 Joint
Stock Companies Act. This was subsequently consolidated with a number of other statutes in the Companies Act 1862, which
remained in force for the rest of the century,up to and including the time of the decision inSalomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd.[25]

The legislation shortly gave way to a railway boom, and from then, the numbers of companies formed soared. In the later nineteenth
century, depression took hold, and just as company numbers had boomed, many began to implode and fall into insolvency. Much
strong academic, legislative and judicial opinion was opposed to the notion that businessmen could escape accountability for their
role in the failing businesses.

Further developments
In 1892, Germany introduced the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung with a separate File:Lori Lindley cropp.jpg
legal personality and limited liability even if all the shares of the company were held by Lindley LJ was the leading
only one person. This inspired other countries to introduce corporations of this kind. expert on partnerships and
company law in the Salomon
The last significant development in the history of companies was the 1897 decision of the v. Salomon & Co. case. The
House of Lords in Salomon v. Salomon & Co. where the House of Lords confirmed the landmark case confirmed the
separate legal personality of the company, and that the liabilities of the company were distinct corporate identityof
the company.
separate and distinct from those of its owners.

In the United States, forming a corporation usually required an act of legislation until the
late 19th century. Many private firms, such as Carnegie's steel company and Rockefeller's Standard Oil, avoided the corporate model
for this reason (as a trust). State governments began to adopt more permissive corporate laws from the early 19th century, although
.[26]
these were all restrictive in design, often with the intention of preventing corporations for gaining too much wealth and power

New Jersey was the first state to adopt an "enabling" corporate law, with the goal of attracting more business to the state,[27] in 1896.
In 1899, Delaware followed New Jersey's lead with the enactment of an enabling corporate statute, but Delaware only became the
[26]
leading corporate state after the enabling provisions of the 1896 New Jersey corporate law were repealed in 1913.

The end of the 19th century saw the emergence of holding companies and corporate mergers creating larger corporations with
dispersed shareholders. Countries began enacting anti-trust laws to prevent anti-competitive practices and corporations were granted
more legal rights and protections. The 20th century saw a proliferation of laws allowing for the creation of corporations by
registration across the world, which helped to drive economic booms in many countries before and after World War I. Another major
post World War I shift was toward the development of conglomerates, in which large corporations purchased smaller corporations to
expand their industrial base.

Starting in the 1980s, many countries with large state-owned corporations moved toward privatization, the selling of publicly owned
(or 'nationalised') services and enterprises to corporations. Deregulation (reducing the regulation of corporate activity) often
accompanied privatization as part of a laissez-faire policy
.

Ownership and control

A corporation is, at least in theory, owned and controlled by its members. In a joint-stock company the members are known as
shareholders and each of their shares in the ownership, control, and profits of the corporation is determined by the portion of shares in
the company that they own. Thus a person who owns a quarter of the shares of a joint-stock company owns a quarter of the company,
is entitled to a quarter of the profit (or at least a quarter of the profit given to shareholders as dividends) and has a quarter of the votes
capable of being cast at general meetings.

In another kind of corporation, the legal document which established the corporation or which contains its current rules will
determine who the corporation's members are. Who a member is depends on what kind of corporation is involved. In a worker
cooperative, the members are people who work for the cooperative. In a credit union, the members are people who have accounts
with the credit union.[28]

The day-to-day activities of a corporation are typically controlled by individuals appointed by the members. In some cases, this will
be a single individual but more commonly corporations are controlled by a committee or by committees. Broadly speaking, there are
two kinds of committee structure.

A single committee known as aboard of directors is the method favored in mostcommon law countries. Under this
model, the board of directors is composed of both executive and non-executive directors, the latter being meant to
supervise the former's management of the company .
A two-tiered committee structure with asupervisory board and a managing board is common in civil law
countries.[29]

Formation
Historically, corporations were created by a charter granted by government. Today, corporations are usually registered with the state,
province, or national government and regulated by the laws enacted by that government. Registration is the main prerequisite to the
corporation's assumption of limited liability. The law sometimes requires the corporation to designate its principal address, as well as
a registered agent (a person or company designated to receive legal service of process). It may also be required to designate an agent
or other legal representative of the corporation.

Generally, a corporation files articles of incorporation with the government, laying out the general nature of the corporation, the
amount of stock it is authorized to issue, and the names and addresses of directors. Once the articles are approved, the corporation's
directors meet to createbylaws that govern the internal functions of the corporation, such as meeting procedures and ficer
of positions.

The law of the jurisdiction in which a corporation operates will regulate most of its internal activities, as well as its finances. If a
corporation operates outside its home state, it is often required to register with other governments as a foreign corporation, and is
almost always subject to laws of its host state pertaining toemployment, crimes, contracts, civil actions, and the like.

Naming
Corporations generally have a distinct name. Historically, some corporations were named after their membership: for instance, "The
President and Fellows of Harvard College". Nowadays, corporations in most jurisdictions have a distinct name that does not need to
make reference to their membership. In Canada, this possibility is taken to its logical extreme: many smaller Canadian corporations
have no names at all, merely numbers based on a registration number (for example, "12345678 Ontario Limited"), which is assigned
by the provincial or territorial government where the corporation incorporates.

In most countries, corporate names include a term or an abbreviation that denotes the corporate status of the entity (for example,
"Incorporated" or "Inc." in the United States) or the limited liability of its members (for example, "Limited" or "Ltd."). These terms
vary by jurisdiction and language. In some jurisdictions, they are mandatory, and in others they are not.[30] Their use puts everybody
on constructive notice that they are dealing with an entity whose liability is limited: one can only collect from whatever assets the
entity still controls when one obtains a judgment against it.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the use of the word "company" alone to denote corporate status, since the word "company" may
refer to a partnership or some other form of collective ownership (in the United States it can be used by a sole proprietorship but this
is not generally the case elsewhere).

See also
Law Fascism
Commercial law Good standing
United States corporate law Government-owned corporation
European corporate law History of competition law
German company law Incorporation (business)
History of company law in the United Kingdom Limited liability company
United Kingdom company law Living wage
Other Megacorporation
Multinational corporation
Anti-corporate activism Nationalization
Business attire Nonprofit corporation
Blocker corporation Organizational culture
Community interest company Preferred stock
Cooperative Privatization
Corporate crime Professional corporation(PC or P.C.)
Corporate governance Public limited company(PLC)
Corporate haven Shelf corporation
Corporate welfare Small business
Corporation sole South Sea Company
Corporatism Tulip mania
Corporatization United States antitrust law
Decentralized autonomous organization Unlimited company
Evil corporation Unlimited liability corporation

Notes
1. "Types Of Corporations | Incorporate A Business" (https://www.corpnet.com/types-of-corporations/#gfp).
www.corpnet.com. Retrieved 2017-06-10.
2. Pettet, B. G. (2005). Company Law. Pearson Education. p. 151."Reading the above, makes it possible to forget that
the shareholders are theowners of the company."
3. Courtney, Thomas B. (2002). The Law of Private Companies(2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Professional. 4.001."As a
corporation, or body corporate, a private company is regarded in law as having a separate legal personality from its
shareholders (owners) and directors (managers)."
4. corporation (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/corporation). CollinsDictionary.com. Collins English
Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 11th Edition. Retrieved December 07, 2012.
5. Emberland, Marius (2006).The Human Rights of Companies: Exploring the Structure of ECHR Protection (http://fds.
oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-928983-2.pdf) (PDF). Oxford University Press. p. 1.ISBN 978-0-19-928983-7.
Retrieved 2 June 2012.
6. e.g. South African ConstitutionSect.8, especially Art.(4)
7. Phillip I. Blumberg, The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law: The Search for a New Corporate Personality
,
(1993) discusses the controversial nature of additional rights being granted to corporations.
8. See, for example, the Business Corporations Act (B.C.) [SBC 2002] CHAPTER 57, Part 10
9. e.g. Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007
10. Harold Joseph Berman,Law and Revolution (vol. 1): The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 215–16.ISBN 0674517768
11. Vikramaditya S. Khanna (2005).The Economic History of the Corporate Form in Ancient India.(http://papers.ssrn.co
m/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=)University of Michigan.
12. Om Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
1998).
13. John Keay, The Honorable Company: A History of the English East India Company
(MacMillan, New York 1991).
14. Haynes, Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud, Stephanie Metz, Jody Dunville, Shannon Heath, Julia P . McLeod, Kat Powell,
Brent Robida, John Stromski, Brandon."British East India Company"(http://web.utk.edu/~gerard/romanticpolitics/brit
isheastindia.html). Retrieved 19 January 2017.
15. Ibid. at p. 113
16. "Adam Smith Laissez-Faire"(http://political-economy.com/adam-smith-laissez-faire/). political-economy.com.
Retrieved 2017-06-10.
17. A Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the W
ealth of Nations (1776) Book V, ch 1, para 107 (http://www.e
conlib.org/library/Smith/smWN20.html#anchor_j65)
18. See Bubble Companies, etc. Act 1825, 6 Geo 4, c 91
19. See C Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843) ch 27
20. Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Joint Stock Companies(1844) in British Parliamentary Papers, vol. VII
21. Paul Lyndon Davies (2010). Introduction to Company Law(https://books.google.com/books?id=LQflMqcZyOoC)
.
Oxford University Press. p. 1.
22. Re Sea Fire and Life Assurance Co., Greenwood's Case(1854) 3 De GM&G 459
23. Graeme G. Acheson & John D. Turner, The Impact of Limited Liability on Ownership and Control: Irish Banking,
1877–1914, School of Management and Economics, Queen's University of Belfast, available at "Archived copy" (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20120113082939/http://www .ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/AchesonT urnerPaper.p
df) (PDF). Archived from the original (http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/AchesonTurnerPaper.pdf)
(PDF) on 2012-01-13. Retrieved 2011-11-16. and "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20120111172110/htt
p://www1.fee.uva.nl/fm/conference/legal/ehr_2006_%20Acheson%20and%20T urner.pdf) (PDF). Archived from the
original (http://www1.fee.uva.nl/fm/conference/legal/ehr_2006_%20Acheson%20and%20T urner.pdf) (PDF) on 2012-
01-11. Retrieved 2011-11-16..
24. Economist, December 18, 1926, at 1053, as quoted in Mahoney
, supra, at 875.
25. Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd[1897] AC 22
26. Smiddy, Linda O.; Cunningham, Lawrence A.(2010), Corporations and Other Business Organizations: Cases,
Materials, Problems (Seventh ed.), LexisNexis, pp. 228–31, 241,ISBN 978-1-4224-7659-8
27. The Law of Business Organizations(https://books.google.com/books?id=ftzqaBv7X_sC&pg=P
A159&lpg=PA159&dq
=%22new+jersey%22+%22first+state%22+%22business+corporation%22&source=web&ots=n5Af0liBo5&sig=A2RR
h_zOyS7W3CCMK4ZyG6Scmwk), Cengage Learning
28. Besley, Scott; Brigham, Eugene (2008).Principles of Finance (4th ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 105.
ISBN 9780324655889. "A credit union is a depository institution that is owned by its depositors...
"
29. "Company & Commercial – Netherlands: In a nutshell – one-tier boards"
(http://www.internationallawoffice.com/news
letters/detail.aspx?g=f4815d3b-0de3-44d3-81d8-16114b49b8d8) . International Law Office. 10 April 2012.
30. The U.S. state of California is an example of a jurisdiction that does not require corporations to indicate corporate
status in their names, except for close corporations. The drafters of the 1977 revision of the California General
Corporation Law considered the possibility of forcing all California corporations to have a name indicating corporate
status, but decided against it because of the huge number of corporations that would have had to change their
names, and the lack of any evidence that anyone had been harmed in California by entities whose corporate status
was not immediately apparent from their names. However , the 1977 drafters were able to impose the current
disclosure requirement for close corporations. See Harold Marsh, Jr ., R. Roy Finkle, Larry W. Sonsini, and Ann
Yvonne Walker, Marsh's California Corporation Law, 4th ed., vol. 1 (New York: Aspen Publishers, 2004), 5–15 — 5–
16.

Further reading
A Comparative Bibliography: Regulatory Competition on Corporate Law
Blumberg, Phillip I., The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law: The Search for a New Corporate Personality
,
(1993)
Bromberg, Alan R. Crane and Bromberg on Partnership. 1968.
Brown, Bruce. The History of the Corporation(2003)
Cadman, John William.The Corporation in New Jersey: Business and Politics,, (1949)
Conard, Alfred F. Corporations in Perspective. 1976.
Cooke, C. A., Corporation, Trust and Company: A Legal History, (1950)
 Davis, John P. Corporations (1904)
Davis, Joseph S. Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations(1917)
Dignam, A and Lowry, J (2006) Company Law, Oxford University PressISBN 978-0-19-928936-3
Dodd, Edwin Merrick. American Business Corporations until 1860, W ith Special Reference to Massachusetts, (1954)
DuBois, A.B. The English Business Company after the Bubble Act,, (1938)\
Freedman, Charles. Joint-stock Enterprise in France, : From Privileged Company to Modern Corporation (1979)
Freund, Ernst. MCMaster.ca, The Legal Nature of the Corporation(1897)
Hallis, Frederick. Corporate Personality: A Study in Jurisprudence(1930)
Hessen, Robert. In Defense of the Corporation. Hoover Institute. 1979.
Hunt, Bishop. The Development of the Business Corporation in England(1936)
Klein and Coffee. Business Organization and Finance: Legal and Economic Principles . Foundation. 2002.
Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra. Corporate Life in Ancient India, (1920)
Means, Robert Charles.Underdevelopment and the Development of Law: Corporations and Corporation Law in
Nineteenth-century Colombia, (1980)
Micklethwait, John and Wooldridge, Adrian. The Company: a Short History of a Revolutionary Idea . New York:
Modern Library. 2003.
Owen, Thomas. The Corporation under Russian Law, : A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy (1991)
Rungta, Radhe Shyam.The Rise of the Business Corporation in India, 1851–1900 , (1970)
Scott, W. R. Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 (1912)
Sobel, Robert. The Age of Giant Corporations: a Microeconomic History of American Business . (1984)
Barnet, Richard; Muller, Ronald E. (1974). Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporation . New York:
Simon & Schuster.
PG Mahoney, 'Contract or Concession? An Essay on the History of Corporate Law' (2000) 34 Ga. Law Review 873
PI Blumberg, The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law(1993)
PL Davies and LCB Gower, Principles of Modern Company Law(6th edn Sweet and Maxwell 1997) chapters 2-4
RR Formoy, The Historical Foundations of Company Law(Sweet and Maxwell 1923) 21
P Frentrop, A History of Corporate Governance 1602–2002(Brussels et al., 2003)
S Kyd, A Treatise on the Law of Corporations(1793–1794)
J Micklethwait and A Wooldridge, The company: A short history of a revolutionary idea(Modern Library 2003)
W Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England(1765) 455–73

External links
US Corporate Law at Wikibooks
an Audio from a talk about the history of corporations and the English Law by Barrister Daniel Bennett

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This page was last edited on 20 December 2017, at 14:53.

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