SECRETARIAL PRACTICE 
CHAPTER 1 
COMPANIES IN GENERAL 
THe word ‘Company’ throughout this book generally means 
a body incorporated under some one or more of the Acts of 
Parliament which relate exclusively to companies in general. 
This phraseology of daily life happens to accord, with 
substantial accuracy, with the definitions in the Companies 
Act, 1929. S. 380 of that Act defines a company as a campany 
formed and registered under that Act, or an existing company; 
whilst an ‘existing company’ means any company formed 
and registered under the Joint Stock Companies Acts, the 
Companies Act, 1862, or the Companies (Consolidation) Act, 
1908, which was not registered under such Acts in Northern 
[reland or the Irish Free State. The Joint Stock Companies 
Acts are defined to mean the Joint Stock Companies Act, 1856, 
and certain other Acts before 1862; but the expression does 
not include the Joint Stock Companies Act, 1844, under 
which Act companies were first empowered to become incor- 
porated, although without limited liability. The right to 
register with limited liability was first conferred by an Act of 
1855, which was replaced by the codifying Act of 1856, 
mentioned above. 
It must not be overlooked, however, that there are two 
important classes of companies or corporations to which 
neither the Joint Stock Companies Acts, nor the Companies 
Act, 1929, have any direct relation. 
The first of these are associations incorporated by royal 
charter, of which the British South Africa Compary and the 
Trust and Loan Company of Canada may be taken as examples. 
The other class comprises that large body of companies 
incorporated under special Acts of Parliament, generally for 
the purpose of working some undertaking of a public nature, 
e.g. railway companies, gas companies, dock companies, and 
the like. Companies of this class are commonly described 
as Statutory Companies. They are dealt with specially in 
Chapter XXIII.