A Shareholder Lawsuit in Fourteenth Century Toulouse

William N. Goetzmann and Sébastien Pouget
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William N. Goetzmann: Yale School of Management - Yale University [New Haven]
Sébastien Pouget: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, TSM - Toulouse School of Management Research - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - TSM - Toulouse School of Management - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse

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Abstract: The milling companies of medieval Toulouse provide an opportunity to examine how one early manifestation of the corporate form grew out of feudal precedent. The historical roots of business companies are typically traced back to business partnerships and the Roman trading societas. This lineage has posed problems for legal scholars because it does not account for one distinctive characteristic of the modern corporation: the tradability of shares. Henry Hansmann, Reinier Kraakman, and Richard Squire (2006) argue that a precondition to share tradability is the characteristic of entity-shielding—the protection of the firm from claims against one of the shareholders. In their view, entity-shielding eliminated the need to assess the liabilities of potential shareholders. This, in turn, enabled companies to raise capital from a large pool of anonymous investors and to allow transfer of shares without approval.

Date: 2011
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Published in Origins of Shareholder Advocacy, Jonathan GS Koppell / Palgrave Macmillan US, pp.215-229, 2011, 978-0-230-10732-8. ⟨10.1057/9780230116665⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05495509

DOI: 10.1057/9780230116665

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