From the Voc to the Spac: At the Root of the Corporation’s Soul

This article aims to provide a thorough analysis of the evolution of the company, starting from the inception of the first public company in the seventeenth century, namely the United East India Company (VOC), until the modern expression of a novel form of cash-shell company that in recent years has taken Wall Street by storm: the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). As opposed to common wisdom that would like to compare the SPAC to England’s South Sea Bubble of 1720, the paper argues that both the VOC and the SPAC have remarkable similarities by virtue of sharing one of the most important corporate features: ‘venturing beyond’ for special purposes, and being the instruments through which the dreams of entrepreneurs can be realised.