Nature of a Company:

There is no precise legal definition of "a company". This is due to historical reasons which are too lengthy to be narrated in this text. Suffice it to say that the word "company" is a by-product of mercantile rather than legal ingenuity and was in use in England long before what is now called "company Law" came into existence.

Although the word was initially used by English merchants to denote associations which they had formed for trading overseas, such as British East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company, it was gradually extended with surprising latitude to diverse associations until it ceased to have a specific meaning. One major consequence of this extension is that the English Company Law which has been adopted in Kenya defines or classifies "companies" according to the mode of their formation rather than according to their intrinsic attributes.