A corporation is a company where a group of people are perceived to be part-owners. There are basically two types of corporations: one that is privately owned and another, a publicly held corporation. A privately held corporation is one where the shareholders know each other. They are usually related to each other, some corporations have the whole family as the shareholders. An example of a privately listed company is Cargill Corporation. A publicly listed corporation is one where the shareholders virtually do not know each other.

An advantage of a corporation is that the owners have limited liability. When the company was engaged in a lawsuit, the corporation is liable for its settlement fees and not the owners or major stockholders. The worst thing that can happen is for the company the close down. In the case of sole proprietorship, the owner of the business is considered as the company itself thus he will be held liable should he lost in the lawsuit. Corporations limit the risk and protect its shareholders.

A corporation gives the company huge amounts of initial capital. This is so because more and more people would be buying shares in the hope of gaining annual dividends from the company. With this, it would then be easy for people to invest in the company because of its attractive business packages.

A corporation has the tendency to exist eternally as long as there are shareholders who continue to hold on to their investment at the company. In this reason the company would then boast of stability and strength. Investors are also attracted to the companys excellent business operations made possible because of the corporations huge capitals.

There are a lot of privately-held companies nowadays who switch to making their company publicly-owned for the reasons of: expansion and improvement or sophistication of business models.

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