Chartered company

A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration, and colonization.

History

Companies enabled merchants to band together to undertake ventures requiring more capital than was available to any one merchant or family. From the sixteenth century onwards, groups of European investors formed companies to underwrite and profit from the exploration of Africa, India, Asia, the Caribbean and North America, usually under the patronage of one state, which issued the company's charter. But chartered companies go back into the medieval period. Authorizations of charters enabled even small states to greatly augment their influence by indirect rule, steering private resources into national pursuits of exploration and trade. As they grew wealthier, some companies developed extensive administrations for their ventures, and frequently conducted local affairs with little homeland oversight.

Chartered companies were usually formed, incorporated and legitimised under a royal or, in republics, an equivalent government charter. This document set out the terms under which the company could trade; defined its boundaries of influence, and described its rights and responsibilities.

Charter Company

The Charter Company of Jacksonville, Florida was a conglomerate with more than 180 subsidiaries that was in the Fortune 500 for 11 years beginning in 1974 and ranked 61st in 1984. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in late 1984, eventually selling off all of its businesses and purchasing Spelling Entertainment Inc. to form Spelling Entertainment Group Inc.

History

The Charter Company was started in Jacksonville, Florida in 1949 by Jacksonville native, Raymond Knight Mason, just graduated from college. The company's roots were from the Mason Lumber Company, founded in 1919.

Edward Ball, a powerful figure in Florida business and politics for decades, was Mason's friend and mentor. Ball worked for Alfred I. du Pont for nine years as a business associate before du Pont's death in 1935, then managed the trust's assets for another 46 years.

Charter started with a group of Florida mortgage, banking and land-developing firms. The company then bought 60 small gas stations in 1968.