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Concept
Company
Summary
A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared goals. Companies take various forms, such as:
voluntary associations, which may include nonprofit organizations
business entities, whose aim is generating profit
financial entities and banks
programs or educational institutions
A company can be created as a legal person so that the company itself has limited liability as members perform or fail to discharge their duty according to the publicly declared incorporation, or published policy. When a company closes, it may need to be liquidated to avoid further legal obligations.
Companies may associate and collectively register themselves as new companies; the resulting entities are often known as corporate groups.
A company can be defined as an "artificial person", invisible, intangible, created by or under law, with a discrete legal personality, perpetual succession, and a common seal. Except for some senior positions, companies remain unaffected by the death, insanity, or insolvency of an individual member.
The English word, company, has its origins in the Old French term compagnie (first recorded in 1150), meaning a "society, friendship, intimacy; body of soldiers", which came from the Late Latin word companio ("one who eats bread with you"), first attested in the Salic law ( AD 500) as a calque of the Germanic expression gahlaibo (literally, "with bread"), related to Old High German galeipo ("companion") and to Gothic gahlaiba ("messmate").
By 1303, the word company referred to trade guilds. Usage of the term company to mean "business association" was first recorded in 1553,
and the abbreviation "co." dates from 1769.
In China, companies are often government run or government supported. Other companies may be foreign companies or export-based corporations.
Official source
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