Corporation

A corporation is a legal entity representing a collective of people with the objective of generating profit to shareholders. It is a type of company. 
Corporations are most often found in the Terran Federation. Whilst other star nations have similar concepts of companies, none of them exactly match the definition of a corporation. The only exception to this are the Tesrat Republic and the dominions, which through long-standing Terran influence have adopted the concept as well.
==Corporation types==
There are several types of corporations within the Terran Federation. These are defined by their ownership and by their size.
===By ownership===
====Privately owned public corporations====
Privately owned public corporations are corporations which are owned by non-state-affiliated individuals, but whose stocks are publicly traded in stock exchanges. These are by far the most common type of corporation in the Federation, some notable examples being: Clarktech, Siems or NK.
====Privately owned private corporations====
Privately owned private corporations are similar to public corporations, with the major difference that their stocks are not publicly traded in stock exchanges. Frijkstadt and C2I are the largest and most well-known of these.
====State-owned corporations====
State-owned corporations are corporations entirely owned by the Terran state itself. These have largely been phased out, as many of the state-owned corporations of old have been privatised or have been turned into Terran Corporations. Xanadu Driveyards used to be a state-owned corporation, but was sold off to NK. The largest still active state-owned corporation is TMP.
====Terran Corporations====
Terran Corporations are corporations which are partially owned by the Terran state. The state ownership varies, but is generally between 25% and 60% of total stocks. Knight Corporation is an example.
Terran law states that the workers of any corporation have an unalienable right to form unions and acquire a part of shares. They are also entitled to seats on the board of directors. The amount of seats and shares depends from corporation from corporation, but is generally around 30%. However for the largest Terran companies this rarely exceeds 5%. 
===By size===
====Hypercorporations====
The emergence of the Terran State Corporation made the term of megacorporation obsolete. The term of hypercorporation was devised to describe it and later, after TSC's collapse, five other companies. They are the largest, most influential and most powerful non-governmental entities in the Federation and the galaxy. There are only five of them: C2I, GA, Frijkstadt, Clarktech and Neue-King. These companies all hold near-complete monopolies over their respective sectors, or sometimes are the larger part of a duopoly. Their size and influence is large enough so as to be able to heavily interfere with state policy.
====Megacorporations====
Megacorporations are very large and influential companies, but which are not as utterly omnipresent as hypercorporations. They often operate in foreign space. These include MRGS, TMP, Knight Corporation, AT&Disney, Hyperholdings, Maersk, AZIMOV and GAMI.
====Large corporations====
Large corporations are corporations of relatively large size, but which unlike megacorporations have limited influence. The most well-known of these are Xanadu Driveyards and Marasi Aeronautics.
====Medium corporations====
Medium corporations include any corporation which operates on a single planet, and has less than 30,000 employees. This is one of the most common categories.
====Small corporations====
Small corporations are corporations which have less than a thousand employees.
====Startups====
Startups are small companies which are less than five years old.
==Supermajors==
The supermajors is a term used to refer to the most influential private corporations in the Terran Federation. There are eight of them: C2I, GA, Frijkstadt, Clarktech, Neue-King, MRGS, Maersk and GAMI. All of them hold near monopolies on vital sectors of the economy, for example, hydrogen extraction for C2I and interplanetary transport for Maersk. Along with a few other megacorporations, they make up the lobbying group ALEPH. Most of them can trace back their roots to the early days of the Federation, when they were granted unprecented privileges and the ability to form monopolies by the Custodian's government. Many of these privileges are still present today. One of the most notable privileges is that they do not require employees on their board of directors and that their workers hold only 5% of shares, instead of the usual 30%. They are also represented in the Host of Representatives, alongside commonwealths of the Federation. Whilst this body is only advisory, the supermajors use it to leverage their influence with the Terran government, securing valuable contracts and charters over entire planets. Charters give corporations complete control over a planet's administration, including law enforcement. These are often given out on resource rich worlds that are designed as "high priority exploitation planets". There are more than twice as many chartered worlds as there are commonwealths, for a population of around 564 million people under corporate authority.
The supermajors are considered as too big to fail (TBTF). However the old definition of institutions so vital to the economy they cannot be allowed to collapse has evolved. Now, the largest corporations such as the eight are considered so large that it is impossible, under any circumstances other than a total societal collapse, for them to fall. 
The Terran hyper-reliance on these corporations has led many, especially in the opposition, to label the country a corporatocracy. This term became popular during and after the Great Galactic war, and especially after the signature of the Treaty of Mars. This was because one of the main clauses of the Treaty was to open up alien markets to a select few Terran corporations, and ultimately the Federation was accused of having waged war to expand corporate power.