The creation of the first major, independent institutions, incorporated under royal charter or agreement, to carry out specific and restricted activities which the crown is either unwilling or unable to perform with its own finances. In the UK the creation of the East India Company is an example of such an institution. At its incorporation it was given the sole trading rights between England and those lands east of India. The success of this corporation became the basis for the growth of Empire and the positioning of England as a global power through the subsequent centuries.
The success of the East India Company led directly to the establishment of the London Stock Exchange in the early years of this century. The promise of wealth creation through the purchase of a share and the holding of that stock with others in support of a business enterprise was a new idea and one that attracted virtually all of the moneyed classes in the UK and Europe.
Such was the success of the idea that new corporations such as the South Seas Company, promising wealth through exploration of the other side of the globe, attracted huge sums of investment. It was easy to see how frenzied public demand for shares and a total lack of regulation over the nature of promises and information supplied by directors coupled with governmental complicity in allowing unfettered share trading had the potential for a short term boom in the summer of 1720 prior to the inevitable loss of confidence and stock exchange crash.