Delaware General Corporation Law - History

History

See also: Regulatory competition and Race to the bottom

Delaware acquired its status as a corporate haven in the early 20th century. Following the example of New Jersey, which enacted corporate-friendly laws at the end of the 19th century to attract businesses from New York, Delaware played the game of fiscal competition by adopting in 1899 a general incorporation act aimed at attracting more businesses. Before the rise of general incorporation acts, forming a corporation required a special act of the state legislature. General incorporation allowed anyone to form a corporation by simply raising money and filing articles of incorporation with the state government's secretary of state.

Read more about this topic:  Delaware General Corporation Law

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.
    Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)