Overview

This book adopts a historical perspective to highlight, and bring back into focus, the key features of the modern company. A central argument in the book is that legal personhood attaching to an entity containing a corporate fund seeded by shareholders is a direct and inevitable consequence of limited liability and the company’s status as a separate legal entity from its shareholders. Management by a board subject to legal duties to the company as an entity that can exist in perpetuity facilitates a long term perspective by the board that can accommodate both shareholder and stakeholder interests. These defining characteristics differentiate the modern company from other business forms. The Making of the Modern Company applies a 21st-century lens to the corporation through its history to identify turning points in its development. It sets out how key features emerged in the course of two separate developmental cycles in English corporate law: first with the English East India Company in the 17th century, and then with general incorporation statutes in the 2nd half of the 19th century. The book's historical perspective highlights that the key features are part of the 'secret sauce' of modern companies. Each cycle coincided with unparalleled periods of economic success associated with corporate activity This book will be of interest to corporate law and governance academics, theorists and practitioners, those who study the company from related disciplines, and anyone who questions why uncertainty still exists about the structure of a legal form that has been described as 'amongst mankind’s greatest inventions'.

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9781509959686

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Reviews

Goes a long way to resolving historical and ongoing theoretical debates as to the nature of the company, and connects them to corporate reality. As such, it will be a major text for those engaging with this theoretical debate. ... a must-read book. * Oxford Journal of Legal Studies *

Author Information

Susan Watson is Dean of the Business School and holds joint chairs in the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Business and Economics, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

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