Corporate Law is a kind of law that is most dominant in the modern world of business enterprise. It is also known as the corporations or company law. It is a study on how stakeholders, creditors, employees, directors, and shareholders interact with each other under the company’s internal regulations. The stakeholders may include the environment, community, and consumers.
Corporate Law is an integral part of the much broader law of business associations or companies’ law. The types of business associations may include companies limited by guarantee such as charities or universities; trusts such as pension fund; and partnerships such as law firms. Corporate Law refers to huge business because it has a separate legal personality with unlimited liability or limited liability for its shareholders or members who sell and buy their stocks depending on the performance outcome of the board of directors. The law also deals with the firm that are registered or incorporated under the company or corporate law of a sovereign state or sub-national states.
Corporate Law often has two divisions: the corporate finance and the corporate governance. The corporate finance deals with the rules on the using the capital while the corporate governance deals with the different power relationships within the corporation or company.
The term “corporation” is synonymous with the huge publicly owned companies. In the United States, a company can or cannot be a separate legal entity. A corporation can be referred as company but a company cannot be referred as a corporation because the two has distinct characteristics. The defining component of a corporation is its legal freedom from the people who made it. Once a corporation fails, the employees will lose their jobs and the shareholders will lose their money.
Corporations are recognized to have responsibilities and rights similar to normal people in accordance to the law. It can also exercise its human rights against the real state and individuals.
Corporate laws were believed to have originated from the Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The first recognized commercial associations for the laws were the medieval guilds. The guilds members did not participate in the ventures for common profit instead they agreed to abide by the guild rules. Partnership is the earliest form of joint commercial companies.
Corporate laws are often referred as game plan on how a corporation is to be operated and run. These laws distinguished the powers and the rights of the officers, directors, and shareholders. These laws are not filed ordinarily in any corporate filing office of any state. According to practices, corporate laws can be lengthy or brief.
Corporate laws may vary accordingly to state or company legalities. However, its contents are typical in most cases using the following provisions:
- The place and time for meetings of shareholders, directors, and officers.
- The quantity of directors, including their qualifications and tenure.
- The compensation and title of the corporate officers.
- The company’s fiscal year
- The process of amendment for the laws as the people who do the amendment.
- Any rules on the approval of stock certificates, checks, loans, or contracts.
- Inspection of the company books.