The basic legislation governing the formation and conducts of corporation in Malaysia is the

Companies Act, 1965 (after this the Act) and its amendments. Section 14 (2) of the Act
provides that there are four basic types of company i.e. (a) a company limited by shares, (b) a
company limited by guarantee, (3) a company limited both by shares and guarantee and (d)
an unlimited company. As has been said above, these four types are the basic types since
companies limited by shares can be private or public companies, which this paper will
discuss below. Outside of the Companies Act, 1965, another type of company is a trust
company which is governed by the Trust Companies Act, 1949 (Revised 1973). However, a
company wishing to be registered as trust company must still be incorporated under the
Companies Act, 1965 since section 3 of the Trust Companies Act, 1949 only provides for the
registration of public company as a trust company and not to the incorporation itself, which
must be done under the Companies Act, 1965. This paper however will discuss in detail only
the formation of three types of companies namely the private company limited by shares (the
Sendirian Berhad or Sdn. Bhd company), public company limited by shares (the
Berhad or Bhd company) and the company limited by guarantee.