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Portal:Companies

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A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether natural, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared goals.

Over time, companies have evolved to have following features: "separate legal personality, limited liability, transferable shares, investor ownership, and a managerial hierarchy". The company, as an entity, was created by the state which granted the privilege of incorporation.

Companies take various forms, such as:

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Winmark Corporation's logo

Winmark Corporation is an American franchisor of five retail businesses that specialize in buying and selling used goods. The company is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Winmark was founded in 1988 as Play It Again Sports Franchise Corporation by Ron Olson and Jeffrey Dahlberg after they purchased the Play It Again Sports franchise rights from Martha Morris. They renamed the company to Grow Biz International Inc. in June 1993. Grow Biz went public in August 1993. In 2000, John Morgan replaced Dahlberg as CEO and renamed the company to Winmark in 2001. Morgan rescued Winmark from the verge of bankruptcy by selling financially failing franchise concepts and stores and replacing the management team. The company's strategy was to move from owning stores itself to having franchisees own all the stores.

Winmark Corporation owns five franchise-based retail companies that focus on used goods: Music Go Round (musical instruments), Once Upon a Child (children's clothes and toys), Plato's Closet (adolescent and young adult clothes), Play It Again Sports (sports equipment), and Style Encore (women's clothing). Winmark also owned but subsequently sold four franchise-based retailed companies: Computer Renaissance (computer equipment), Disc Go Round (CDs), It's About Game (computer games and video games), and ReTool (tools). Its subsidiary Wirth Business Credit is a small-business supplies leasing company. (Full article...)
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McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world.

A corporation' is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as "born out of statute"; a legal person in a legal context) and recognized as such in law for certain purposes.' Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e., by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature). Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration. Corporations come in many different types but are usually divided by the law of the jurisdiction where they are chartered based on two aspects: whether they can issue stock, or whether they are formed to make a profit. Depending on the number of owners, a corporation can be classified as aggregate (the subject of this article) or sole (a legal entity consisting of a single incorporated office occupied by a single natural person).

One of the attractive early advantages business corporations offered to their investors, compared to earlier business entities like sole proprietorships and joint partnerships, was limited liability. Limited liability means that a passive shareholder in a corporation will not be personally liable either for contractually agreed obligations of the corporation, or for torts (involuntary harms) committed by the corporation against a third party. Limited liability in a contract is uncontroversial because the parties to the contract could have agreed to it and could agree to waive it by contract. However, limited liability in tort remains controversial because third parties do not agree to waive the right to pursue shareholders. There is significant evidence that limited liability in tort may lead to excessive corporate risk taking and more harm by corporations to third parties. (Full article...)

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Ace Books is a publisher of science fiction (SF) and fantasy books founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn. It began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns, and soon branched out into other genres, publishing its first science fiction title in 1953. This was successful, and science fiction titles outnumbered both mysteries and westerns within a few years. Other genres also made an appearance, including nonfiction, gothic novels, media tie-in novelizations, and romances. Ace became known for the tête-bêche binding format used for many of its early books, although it did not originate the format. Most of the early titles were published in this "Ace Double" format, and Ace continued to issue books in varied genres, bound tête-bêche, until 1973.

Ace, along with Ballantine Books, was one of the leading science fiction publishers for its first ten years of operation. The death of owner A. A. Wyn in 1967 set the stage for a later decline in the publisher's fortunes. Two leading editors, Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, left in 1971, and in 1972 Ace was sold to Grosset & Dunlap. Despite financial troubles, there were further successes, particularly with the third Ace Science Fiction Specials series, for which Carr came back as editor. Further mergers and acquisitions resulted in the company becoming absorbed by Berkley Books. Ace later became an imprint of Penguin Group (USA). (Full article...)

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Siemens AG (German pronunciation: [ˈziːməns] or [-mɛns]) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, distributed energy resources, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, and holds the position of global market leader in industrial automation and industrial software.

The origins of the conglomerate can be traced back to 1847 to the Telegraphen Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske established in Berlin by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske. In 1966, the present-day corporation emerged from the merger of three companies: Siemens & Halske, Siemens-Schuckert, and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke. Today headquartered in Munich and Berlin, Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 320,000 people worldwide and reported a global revenue of around €78 billion in 2023. The company is a component of the DAX and Euro Stoxx 50 stock market indices. As of December 2023, Siemens is the second largest German company by market capitalization.

As of 2023, the principal divisions of Siemens are Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, Mobility and Financial Services, with Siemens Mobility operating as independent entity. Major business divisions that were once part of Siemens before being spun off include semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies (1999), Siemens Mobile (2005), Gigaset Communications (2008), the photonics business Osram (2013), and Siemens Energy (2020). (Full article...)
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