Under UK commercial law, a long-established generic term more or less equivalent to "corporation" in the USA, including various types of joint stock company (another term which has different meanings on either side of the Atlantic):
- public limited companies (whose shares are traded publicly on a stock exchange)
- private limited companies (whose shares are not quoted on a stock exchange and do not have to be offered for public sale),
- private companies limited by guarantee (which have membership rather than share ownership, a form mainly used by charitable or similar organisations)
- Community Interest Companies which can take on any of the forms above but have the additional requirement of a primarily social purpose and have their assets protected from predatory takeover or exploitation for pure profit.
- limited liability partnerships (which are more tightly regulated than other partnerships), mainly used by professionals such as lawyers who have traditionally not been permitted to incorporate their businesses.
In other words, the term covers all the types of commercial organization to which limited liability applies (with the possible exclusion of industrial and provident societies (cooperatives), which offer limited liability to their members but which are not governed by the Companies Act.