The history of companies stretches back to Roman times, and deals principally with associations of people formed to run a business, but also for charitable or leisure purposes. A corporation is one kind of company, and refers to an entity which has a separate legal identity from that both of those people who carry out its activities and those who have rights to its property. Originally, corporations were solely able to be established through an act of the state, for example through royal charter or an Act of Parliament.
It was only in the mid-19th century, the first being through the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856 in the United Kingdom, that private individuals could, through a simple registration procedure, be considered to have established a corporation with limited liability. Companies today dominate economic life in all developed countries and in the global economy.
Read more about History Of Companies: Early Companies, Renaissance and Mercantilism, 18th Century, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or companies:
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Socialite women meet socialite men and mate and breed socialite children so that we can fund small opera companies and ballet troupes because there is no government subsidy.”
—Sugar Rautbord, U.S. socialite fund-raiser and self-described “trash” novelist. As quoted in The Great Divide, book 2, section 7, by Studs Terkel (1988)