Talk:Corporate law/Archives/2011

International views and article title

The title should be Company (Co.), I believe

The apparent inaccuracies aside, this page seems to be redundant, duplicating what is better covered under "Corporation." I think it should be deleted and the title redirected to "corporation." Johnwhunt 15:59, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this should definitely be merged with Corporation. -- PullUpYourSocks 04:20, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please do not move or merge this article! Under English law, a company is quite distinct from a corporation, and this is primarily a legal article. Why don't we try and keep legal information about what a company actually is (in terms of legal definition) here, and what it actually does at "corporation", where there will be a stronger overlap? --VivaEmilyDavies 21:08, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Could you provide a definitive and factual comparison/definition of the two (company and corporation) under English law? Then the articles can be rewriitne with more accuracy. Johnwhunt 19:22, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I added the merge notice, but now that I think about it a bit more, there is a difference. For example a Limited liability company is not a corporation, but is a legal entity. These articles both need to be very clear about the differences, and the fact that there aren't many as far as I know. I'll see if I can't research the differences, but I'm not sure I'll understand everything I find. - Taxman 16:32, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Concur with a merger in this case. As it currently stands, the article contains redundant content which can plainly be incorporated within the far more extensive corporation article. English speakers from Commonwealth countries have simply lost out in developing a decent corporate entity article with the title "company". 203.198.237.30 08:31, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I have done a fairly substantial rewrite of this article. I have tried to keep it "international" but it has a slightly English/Australian/NZ flavour to it just because that is my background. I have tried to avoid too much legal detail, but I have footnoted where appropriate. Personally, I am against merging it with "corporation" because, (i) they are different types of entity even if they have similar concepts (in England though, they are quite different as corporations aggregate and corporations sole), and (ii) if you consolidate those two, how much further do you go? Joint stock company, private limited company, company limited by guarantee, corporation, company, public limited company ... the list for consolidation just goes on and on. Just my POV, but one or two global articles which reach out to smaller articles, and which cross refer back is a more productive way to go. Legis 17:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, a "corporation" includes other bodies - government bodies, and trust corporations in common law jurisdictions. A company is a specific type of corporation. I would not merge, though thought should go into what material goes where to avoid unneccessary duplication. Arthur Markham 19:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a difference in etymology. In the U.S., "company" and "corporation" are synonymous. In much of the rest of the world, "company" is a subset (although clearly the most important subset) of the wider class of "corporations", as Arthur points out. For those reasons I think it is now generally accepted that two separate articles are appropriate. It has also lead to this article having a very "non-U.S." slant to it. Legis 09:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the term "company" and "corporation" do not have a similar meaning in U.S. law. If a business entity is incorporated, it generally includes "corporation" or incorporated" (Inc.) as part of its legal name. Only corporations may issue stock. Any sole proprietorship can run their business (DBA - doing buisiness as) as AnyNameHere Company. Even LLCs (limited liability companies) differ in that they have no shareholders and no stock. Zenithian 22:52, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Facilitating interwiki links, establishing taxonomy

I'm trying to establish meaningful wikilinks in the business area, particularly between the sv, de and en wikipedias, and to some extent the da, nn and no ones.

Company, the way I understand it, signifies any legal entity existing for business purposes (as opposed to i.e. foundations or voluntary associations. I believe the article Types of companies support this view. Company is thus a good translation for de:Unternehmen/sv:företag. When it comes to company types, however, I think some general and specific terms are lacking. I'm not quite sure if Corporation is a general term or specific, or both. It seems to include a range of different company forms in Sweden and Germany, while at the same time incorporating features that are not present in all those forms.

Of course sv:aktiebolag could be interwikied as aktiebolag, but that sort of misses the point, because then de:Aktiengesellschaft would be interwikied as Aktiengesellschaft and then it makes no sense to link the Swedish and German term to each other, which I consider a missed opportunity, since the company forms are as good as identical.

I would like to be able to link sv:aktiebolag/de:Aktiegesellschaft/es:Sociedades_anónimas/something_english. Some are now linked to Corporation, which as stated above doesn't feel right, and some are linked to Joint-stock company, but this article is lacking -- it's unclear of the JSC is a legal entity, and it seems to actually be a current company form in Texas, not just a general concept. I thought Limited liability company seemed a good term, but that's linked to de:GmbH, which is yet another similar, but slightly different, concept.

Limited company seems to be a good term for these kinds of companies, except that the article describes a certain category of UK companies, which don't necessarily include the use of stocks.

In summary: Is there a good name for an article describing companies owned by stock featuring limited liability for the stock owners? If so, there should probably be a joint article for this concept and a category with the same name, where articles such as the above named ones and some other ones would be included.

Help? ;-) clacke 13:54, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Have you had a look at Types of companies? Ewlyahoocom 19:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I did. Sorry if my long rant confused things, I just had to get it out of my system. ;-)

Looking at Types of companies there seems to be an almost-consensus that the term I'm looking for is stock company or stock corporation, of which I feel the former is the more generic one. Does it seem like a good idea to create the category and article Stock company and move the generic parts of the other articles on the theme (AG, AB, JSC etc.) to that article, while adding the remaining (parts of) the articles to the category? clacke 21:31, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you could go either of 2 ways:

1. Make a detailed page for each type of entity as described in the law. But this will be be a lot of pages because there's so many variations from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For example, this is covered at the state level in the United States; or
2. Find a page that already covers most of what you need and add a section that highlights the difference(s) of the type that's missing.

(Just to disclose my bias, I think it's silly to try and cover legal minutiae in Wikipedia.) Ewlyahoocom 21:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

References

I have taken off the "unreferenced" tag. This Article is heavily footnoted, and I think the tag is a hangover from prior to the amendment and restatement. Legis 08:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Wrong emphasis?

Am I alone in thinking that the paragraph ordering may be mis-aligned? Having one very short para on the U.S. (first, of course) and then one other paragraph containing the vast volume of the information relating to the rest of the English speaking world relegated to second, but equal, with all the other information relegated to sub-para status seems to me to be the wrong way to do it. Thoughts? --Legis (talk - contributions) 11:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep. I agree. So, hopefully this won't be seen as too drastic, I'm moving the whole article to the new page name "Company law". This name currently redirects to "Corporations law". Company law in the singular ought to refer to ltd companies, plc's, pty ltd's in Australia, Inc's in the States, companies limited by guarantee, etc. Companies law of course, in the plural, refers to partnerships and so on in addition to ordinary companies. Then I'm reordering the section names and introducing the etymology section. Wikidea 10:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

From Corporations law page

I posted this on the other page, just a moment ago:

The connection with other pages

There are pages on:

1. Companies law 2. Corporate law 3. Business organizations 4. Incorporation (business) 5. Corporation

...just for a start. Now the main problem is the terminology, which isn't entirely shared between the States on the one hand and England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, S. Africa, India, etc on the other hand. In the latter I think it's right to say that when we talk about "companies law" then that includes partnerships, etc - i.e. unincorporated companies, without separate legal personality and limited liability. Whereas in the States, obviously, corporations law is only about the companies which are "incorporated". Really, there ought to be two main pages, one on companies generally, one on the specific kind of company that everyone knows about, the ltd, the plc, the Inc, the pty ltd. In that list above, it seems to me that 4 and 5 ought to be merged, because they're already the same thing; and then 3 and 1 should cover the same subject matter (i.e. the wider scope of companies law). )2 4 and 5 are dealing with the same thing really, although 2 can focus more on law, while 4 and 5 can bring in all the sociological stuff that seems popular at the moment, criticisms etc). But what I am wondering is maybe this page, which is still rather stubbish (although has good content for the bits it covers) ought to be renamed Companies law, because you can't begin to talk partnerships when you refer to corporations, for instance. The current content then could be broadened into a wider discussion on all companies or moved into the Company law page. Hope that isn't all too complicated to follow! Please leave your thoughts. Wikidea 11:05, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Or, having more of a think, perhaps Corporations law could be a page for the big type, and then companies law, for the whole spectrum of firms? Wikidea 11:14, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Opening Sentence

Corporate law (also "company" or "corporations" law) is the law of the most dominant kind of business enterprise in the modern world.

This seems to be entirely gratuitous. If removed, the opening sentence would be:

Corporate law is the study of how shareholders, directors, employees, creditors, and other stakeholders such as consumers, the community and the environment interact with one another under the internal rules of the firm.

That strikes me as a much better opening sentence for the article.--Tedd (talk) 15:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Image

The current image for the corporate law template is File:Scale of justice 2.svg ; perhaps that a new image can be made called File:Corporate_law_icon.svg, combining Mcol_money_bag.svg with the scales of justice (since its not about law itself, but rather about the law ~in respect to companies. 91.182.68.164 (talk) 09:27, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

UK-centric?

In the United states, the term "corporate law" and "corporate lawyers" refer not to a body of laws, but to the practice of law in the service of business transactions, corporate governance (again meaning business rather than corporations specifically), business finance, securities, employment practices, and such. This is a well-written article as it now stands and I don't think it would be helped by working in this second subject. Perhaps a disambiguation link? - Wikidemon (talk) 19:08, 14 December 2010 (UTC)