incorporate. The advantage of establishing a company as a separate legal person was mainly administrative, as a unified entity under which the rights and duties of all investors and managers could be channeled. The most important development, was the Limited Liability Act 1855, which allowed investors to limit their liability in the event of business failure to the amount they invested in the company. These two features – a simple registration procedure and limited liability – were subsequently codified in the first modern company law Act, the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856. A series of Companies Acts up to the present Companies Act 2006 have essentially retained the same fundamental features. Twentieth century Over the twentieth century, companies in the UK became the dominant organisational form of economic activity, which raised concerns about how accountable those who controlled companies were to those who invested in them. The first reforms following the Great Depression, in the Companies Act 1948, ensured that directors could be removed by shareholders with a simple majority vote. In 1977, the government's Bullock Report proposed reform to allow employees to participate in selecting the board of directors, as was happening in across Europe, exemplified by the German Codetermination Act 1976. However the UK never implemented the reforms, and from 1979 the debate shifted. Through the 1990s the focus in corporate governance turned toward internal control mechanisms, such as auditing, separation of the chief executive position from the chair, and remuneration committees to place some check on excessive executive pay. These rules applicable to listed companies, now found in the UK Corporate Governance Code, have been complemented principles based regulation of institutional investors activity in company affairs. The UK's integration in the European Union meant a steadily growing body of EU Directives and case law to harmonise company law within the internal market. See also UK company law UK labour law Citations General and cited references Articles HA Shannon (October 1933). "The Limited Companies of 1866–1883". The Economic Historic Review. 4:3. pp. 290–316. . . Books PL Davies and LCB Gower, Principles of Modern Company Law (6th ed., Sweet and Maxwell, 1997) chapters 2–4 J Micklethwait and A Wooldridge The company: A short history of a revolutionary idea (Modern Library, 2003) History of corporate law United Kingdom company law