20 December 2010
It is the constitution or charter of the company and contains the powers of the company. No company can be registered under the Companies Act, 1956 without the memorandum of association. Under Section 2(28) of the Companies Act, 1956 the memorandum means the memorandum of association of the company as originally framed or as altered from time to time in pursuance with any of the previous companies law or the Companies Act, 1956.
The memorandum of association should be in any of the one form specified in the tables B,C,D and E of Schedule 1 to the Companies Act, 1956. Form in Table B is applicable in case of companies limited by the shares , form in Table C is applicable to the companies limited by guarantee and not having share capital, form in Table D is applicable to company limited by guarantee and having a share capital whereas form in table E is applicable to unlimited companies.
The Memorandum is the charter of a company, which defines the ambit of the operations and the business to be carried on by the company. It is the basic document in the constitution of a company. The main purpose of the Memorandum is to lay down the objects for which a company is formed.
21 December 2010
To add further, the contents of memorandum of association are - 1) Name of the company 2) State in which the Registered Office of the Company is situated 3) Main objects of the company 4) Other Objects of the company 5) Liability clause - whether limited by shares or by guarantee 6) Share Capital with which the company is registered and the division thereof into shares of a fixed amount, and 7) Signature of each subscriber stating the number of shares he takes.