2.1 Development of Company Law in General

The English spine (the exam's ladder): the bubble legislation's prohibition era (the early-18th- century reaction to speculation — companies restricted by statute) → the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 (registration and disclosure — incorporation by filing) → the Limited Liability Act 1855 (the shareholder's capped risk) → the Companies Act 1862 (the consolidated code — the "Ltd." era's birth) → the consolidations and reforms ladder (the 1908 and 1929 consolidation; the 1948 Act's modernisation; the 1985 Act's scheme; the Companies Act 2006 — the current UK code, the most recent general reform). The doctrine's milestones (built case-by-case): Salomon v. Salomon (the separate person — 1897); the ultra viires doctrine's rise and fall (Ashbury v. Riche); Royal British Bank v. Turquand (the indoor-management rule); the majority-rule and minority- protection cases (Foss v. Harbottle and its exceptions) — the common law's company jurisprudence grown beside the statutes. The American and continental lines: the US state- competition story (Delaware's corporate-law industry; the close-corporation and federal securities overlays); the continental codification (the German Aktiengesetz's two-tier board; the French societe tradition; the EU harmonisation directives); the convergence-and-competition debates of the modern era. The international instruments' modern layer: the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance; the securities regulation's global convergence (the IOSCO faces); the insolvency-and-reorganisation models' spread — company law as the globalised commercial law's core.