Courtesy : Bachelors in business administration

Corporate law (also known as business law, company law or enterprise law) is the body of law governing the rights, relations, and conduct of persons, companies, organizations and businesses. The term refers to the legal practice of law relating to corporations, or to the theory of corporations. Corporate law often describes the law relating to matters which derive directly from the life-cycle of a corporation. It thus encompasses the formation, funding, governance, and death of a corporation.# ISO certification in India

While the minute nature of corporate governance as personified by share ownership, capital market, and business culture rules differ, similar legal characteristics and legal problems exist across many jurisdictions. Corporate law regulates how corporations, investors, shareholders, directors, employees, creditors, and other stakeholders such as consumers, the community, and the environment interact with one another. Whilst the term company or business law is colloquially used interchangeably with corporate law, the term business law mostly refers to wider concepts of commercial law, that is the law relating to commercial and business related purposes and activities. In some cases, this may include matters relating to corporate governance or financial law. When used as a substitute for corporate law, business law means the law relating to the business corporation (or business enterprises), including such activity as raising capital, company formation, and registration with the government.# ISO certification in India

Overview

Academics identify four legal characteristics universal to business enterprises. These are:

• Separate legal personality of the corporation (access to tort and contract law in a manner similar to a person)
• Limited liability of the shareholders (a shareholder’s personal liability is limited to the value of their shares in the corporation)
• Transferable shares (if the corporation is a “public company”, the shares are traded on a stock exchange)
• Delegated management under a board structure; the board of directors delegates day-to-day management of the company to executives.

Widely available and user-friendly corporate law enables business participants to possess these four legal characteristics and thus transact as businesses. Thus, corporate law is a response to three endemic opportunism: conflicts between managers and shareholders, between controlling and non-controlling shareholders; and between shareholders and other contractual counterparts (including creditors and employees).# ISO certification in India

A corporation may accurately be called a company; however, a company should not necessarily be called a corporation, which has distinct characteristics. In the United States, a company may or may not be a separate legal entity, and is often used synonymous with “firm” or “business.” According to Black’s Law Dictionary, in America a company means “a corporation — or, less commonly, an association, partnership or union — that carries on industrial enterprise.”Other types of business associations can include partnerships (in the UK governed by the Partnership Act 1890), or trusts (Such as a pension fund), or companies limited by guarantee (like some community organizations or charities). Corporate law deals with companies that are incorporated or registered under the corporate or company law of a sovereign state or their sub-national states.

The defining feature of a corporation is its legal independence from the shareholders that own it. Under corporate law, corporations of all sizes have separate legal personality, with limited or unlimited liability for its shareholders. Shareholders control the company through a board of directors which, in turn, typically delegates control of the corporation’s day-to-day operations to a full-time executive. Shareholders’ losses, in the event of liquidation, are limited to their stake in the corporation, and they are not liable for any remaining debts owed to the corporation’s creditors. This rule is called limited liability, and it is why the names of corporations end with “Ltd.” or some variant such as “Inc.” or “pic.”# ISO certification in India

Under almost all legal systems^[which?] corporations have much the same legal rights and obligations as individuals. In some jurisdictions, this extends to allow corporations to exercise human rights against real individuals and the state,and they may be responsible for human rights violations.Just as they are “born” into existence through its members obtaining a certificate of incorporation, they can “die” when they lose money into insolvency. Corporations can even be convicted of criminal offences, such as corporate fraud and corporate manslaughter