Wiktionary
n. (plural of corporation English)
Wikipedia
There were two types of corporate actors at work in the Upper Canadian economy: the legislatively chartered companies and the unregulated joint stock companies. These two business forms had different legal standing; chartered corporations had a “ separate personality" - they were a legal person quite distinct from its members or shareholders, a legal fiction which protected those shareholders with limited liability. In contrast, joint stock companies were made illegal by the English Bubble Act of 1720. Joint stock companies were considered extensive partnerships under common law, and English legislation limited these to a maximum of six partners. Without incorporation, the company was not considered a “separate personality.” It could not hold property; this was held by trustees, who usually had to provide a bond or security. Without incorporation, the company could neither sue nor be sued at law. And without incorporation, shareholders were personally responsible for the debts to the company to the full extent of their personal property; shareholders were not protected by limited liability. There were, then, significant legal hurdles that made the joint stock company an unwieldy form of partnership.
Despite the difficulties in the unincorporated joint stock company form, it became increasingly popular in the late eighteenth century in Britain as the means through which public works were carried out. General public feeling was that all corporations, chartered or otherwise, should only be founded for the public benefit. Although a limited number of companies were formed for the purpose of for-profit trade, others were simply a way of controlling forms of common property.
Usage examples of "corporations".
The big oil corporations have a lot to do with what is going on over there.
Watergate affair, that of Archibald Cox, a special prosecutor later fired by Nixon, the corporations got off easy.
As technology developed and corporations became larger, they needed more capital, and it was the bankers who had this capital.
Instead of giving out contracts for jet bombers and nuclear submarines, contracts could be offered to nonprofit corporations to hire people to build homes, construct public transport systems, clean up the rivers and lakes, turn our cities into decent places to live.
Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, ran for President in 1884, the general impression in the country was that he opposed the power of monopolies and corporations, and that the Republican party, whose candidate was James Blaine, stood for the wealthy.
Harrison had the exclusive distinction of having served the railway corporations in the dual capacity of lawyer and soldier.
South, in which prisoners were leased in slave labor to corporations, used thus to depress the general level of wages and also to break strikes.
Populist movement enticed into the Democratic party, Bryan, the Democratic candidate, was defeated by William McKinley, for whom the corporations and the press mobilized, in the first massive use of money in an election campaign.
Two-thirds of the 40 billion spent on weapons systems was going to twelve or fifteen giant industrial corporations, whose main reason for existence was to fulfill government military contracts.
American Airlines, and other huge American corporations had made illegal contributions, running into millions of dollars, to the Nixon campaign.
United States corporations, one would only have to note the situation in banking.
American corporations were active all over the world on a scale never seen before.
American corporations depended on the poorer countries for 100 percent of their diamonds, coffee, platinum, mercury, natural rubber, and cobalt.
He became an advocate of removing regulations on corporations and giving them more leeway, even if this was hurtful to labor and to consumers.
For the next two hundred years, the American government continued to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful, offering millions of acres of free land to the railroads, setting high tariffs to protect manufacturers, giving tax breaks to oil corporations, and using its armed forces to suppress strikes and rebellions.