Editing Corporation (section)

==== Deregulation ====
[[File: Jack and the Giant Joint-Stock.jpg|thumb|"Jack and the Giant Joint-Stock", a cartoon in ''Town Talk'' (1858) satirizing the 'monster' joint-stock economy that came into being after the [[Joint Stock Companies Act 1844]]]]
The British [[Bubble Act 1720]]'s prohibition on establishing companies remained in force until its repeal in 1825. By this point, the [[Industrial Revolution]] had gathered pace, pressing for legal change to facilitate business activity.<ref>See [[Bubble Companies, etc. Act 1825]], 6 Geo 4, c 91</ref> The repeal was the beginning of a gradual lifting on restrictions, though business ventures (such as those chronicled by [[Charles Dickens]] in ''[[Martin Chuzzlewit]]'') under primitive companies legislation were often scams. Without cohesive regulation, proverbial operations like the "Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company" were undercapitalized ventures promising no hope of success except for richly paid promoters.<ref>See [[C Dickens]], ''[[Martin Chuzzlewit]]'' (1843) [[s:Martin Chuzzlewit/Chapter 27|ch 27]]</ref>

The process of [[incorporation (business)|incorporation]] was possible only through a [[royal charter]] or a [[local and personal Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom|private act]] and was limited, owing to Parliament's jealous protection of the privileges and advantages thereby granted. As a result, many businesses came to be operated as [[Voluntary association|unincorporated associations]] with possibly thousands of members. Any consequent [[Lawsuit|litigation]] had to be carried out in the joint names of all the members and was almost impossibly cumbersome. Though Parliament would sometimes grant a private act to allow an individual to represent the whole in legal proceedings, this was a narrow and necessarily costly expedient, allowed only to established companies.

Then, in 1843, [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]] became the chairman of a Parliamentary Committee on Joint Stock Companies, which led to the [[Joint Stock Companies Act 1844]], regarded as the first modern piece of company law.<ref>''Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Joint Stock Companies'' (1844) in ''British Parliamentary Papers'', vol. VII</ref> The Act created the [[Registrar of Companies|Registrar of Joint Stock Companies]], empowered to register companies by a two-stage process. The first, provisional, stage cost £5 and did not confer corporate status, which arose after completing the second stage for another £5. For the first time in history, it was possible for ordinary people through a simple registration procedure to incorporate.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQflMqcZyOoC|title=Introduction to Company Law|author=Paul Lyndon Davies|year=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=1|isbn=978-0-19-960132-5}}</ref> The advantage of establishing a company as a [[Legal personality|separate legal person]] was mainly administrative, as a unified entity under which the rights and duties of all investors and managers could be channeled.