Organizational Forms, Corporate Issuer Features, and Ownership

This learning module introduces the Corporate Issuers topic area, which covers the fundamentals of how corporations are organized and governed and how they make operating, investing, and financing decisions. Financial analysts must have a strong understanding of corporate issuers because they are the largest type of issuer in financial markets globally; many analysts are focused entirely on analyzing and investing in their debt or equity instruments. In the first lesson of this module, we describe and compare the legal organizational forms of businesses, emphasizing their similarities and differences and important implications for investors. The second lesson focuses on the corporate organizational form and its key features, such as the separation of ownership and management, limited shareholder liability, access to financing, and tax issues. In the final lesson, we compare privately held and public corporate issuers, including the mechanisms of how corporate issuers go public and are taken private.