Company

Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared goals.

Over time, companies have evolved to have the following features: "separate legal personality, limited liability, transferable shares, investor ownership, and a managerial hierarchy".

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 "society, friendship, intimacy; body of soldiers",[3] which came from the Late Latin word companio ("one who eats bread with you"), first attested in the Salic law (c. 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").

[4] The usage of the term company to mean "business association" was first recorded in 1553,[5] and the abbreviation "co." dates from 1769.

For example, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock company, trust, fund, or organized group of persons, whether incorporated or not, and (in an official capacity) any receiver, trustee in bankruptcy, or similar official, or liquidating agent, for any of the foregoing".