https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksdAC8CYF7A
Joint-stock companies first appeared during the Tang dynasty in China (618–907 CE). Typically these had one active partner and one or two passive investors but by the Song dynasty this had grown to include a large number of shareholders who employed a merchant to manage the business using the investors' funds. In this way the investors reduced their risk and were compensated with a share of profits without having to worry about day to day operations or the interest payments.
In France about 1250, the Bazacle Milling Company in Toulouse, issued 96 shares that were traded at a value that depended on the profitability of the mills the society owned.
The Swedish company Stora documented a stock transfer for an eighth part of the copper deposits it owned as early as 1288.When it was chartered, in 1553, the first English joint-stock company was the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands. It had 250 shareholders.
Queen Elizabeth I of England granted a monopoly on trade, between Russia and England, to the Muscovy Company in 1555. And in1600, Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies giving it a fifteen-year monopoly on all English trade with India. Stocks and bonds were issued and each investor was entitled to a fixed percentage of East India Company's profits. Shareholders were well rewarded as the company paid an average dividend of over 16% per year from 1602 to 1650.
The company came to eventually govern large areas of India, from 1757 to 1858, when rule was taken over by the British government, and this lasted until 1947 when India became self governing.
The Dutch East India Company/United East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC), founded in 1602, was the forerunner of modern companies and one of the first permanently organized, limited-liability, joint-stock companies. The company issued shares that were tradable on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, which made it easier to attract capital from investors, as they could now more easily sell their shares. Further innovations in 1612 made it the first 'corporation' in intercontinental trade with 'locked in' capital and limited liability. Meaning that the company could not reduce the original capital and that investors risk was limited to what they paid for their shares. The transferable shares typically earned 'divisions' (dividends) paid to shareholders by dividing up the profits of the voyage in the proportion to the number of shares held.
The Dutch East India Company was the first recorded company to pay regular annual dividends, of about 18 percent of the value of the shares, for almost 200 years of the company's existence (1602–1800). Dividends were usually in cash, but when working capital was low and detrimental to the survival of the company, divisions were either postponed or paid out with unsold cargo which shareholder could sell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewCs5CF5HEg VON
The Virginia Company of London was chartered by King James I of England in April 1606 with the purpose of colonizing the eastern coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N.
King Charles II gave a royal charter to "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay" on 2 May 1670. The charter granted the company a monopoly over the region drained by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern Canada. The Hudson's Bay Company, a fur trading business for most of its history, was the oldest incorporated joint-stock, merchandising company in the English-speaking world until it was liquidated in 2025.
Registration and incorporation of companies was introduced by the British, Joint Stock Companies Act 1844. Limited liability for all joint-stock companies was provided the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856.
Today, a joint-stock company is incorporated as a limited liability company (which means that it possesses a legal personality separate from the shareholders. Shareholders are liable for the company's debts only to the value of the money they have invested in the company). This structure has the advantages that the company may continue in business after the original shareholders and bondholders have died and permits the accumulation of capital for investment in larger and longer-lasting projects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42gEi4ah2x8
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