13 Facts About Joint-stock company

Joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders.

In modern-day corporate law, the existence of a joint-stock company is often synonymous with incorporation and limited liability .

Joint-stock company is managed on behalf of the shareholders by a board of directors, elected at an annual general meeting.

An early form of joint-stock company was the medieval commenda, although it was usually employed for a single commercial expedition.

The Swedish Joint-stock company Stora has documented a stock transfer for an eighth of the Joint-stock company as early as 1288.

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In more recent history, the earliest joint-stock company recognized in England was the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands, chartered in 1553 with 250 shareholders.

The joint-stock company became a more viable financial structure than previous guilds or state-regulated companies.

Joint-stock company companies paid out divisions to their shareholders by dividing up the profits of the voyage in the proportion of shares held.

Divisions were usually cash, but when working capital was low and detrimental to the survival of the Joint-stock company, divisions were either postponed or paid out in remaining cargo, which could be sold by shareholders for profit.

Joint-stock company profit being passed on is thus effectively taxed only at the rate of tax paid by the eventual recipient of the dividend.

Institution most often referenced by the word "corporation" is publicly traded, which means that the Joint-stock company's shares are traded on a public stock exchange whose shares of stock of corporations are bought and sold by and to the general public.

The latter is a hybrid of the limited partnership and public limited Joint-stock company, having two categories of shareholders, some with and some without limited liability, and is rarely used in practice.

The vast majority of them attach to corporations under state law, especially the law of the state in which the Joint-stock company is incorporated – since the corporations very existence is predicated on the laws of that state.