Germany,
France, Belgium, Greece, Italy and Spain are concerned, is expressly
recognized in a series of conventions entered into between those
countries and Great Britain. The value of the convention with France has
been much impaired by the interpretation put upon the words of it by the
court of cassation in _La Construction Lim_. According to this case the
nationality of a company depends not on its place of origin but on where
it has its centre of affairs, its principal establishment. The result is
that a company registered in Britain under the Companies Acts may be
transmuted by a French court into a French company in direct violation
of the convention. The convention with Germany, which is in similar
terms to that with France, has also been narrowed by judicial
construction. The "power of exercising all their rights" given by the
convention to British companies has been construed to mean that a
British company will be recognized as a corporate body in Germany, but
it does not follow from the terms of the convention that any British
company may as a matter of course establish a branch and carry on
business within the German empire. It must still get permission to
trade, permission to hold land. It must register itself in the communal
register. It must pay stamp duties.

Foreign companies may found an affiliated company or have a branch
establishment in Italy, provided they publish their memorandum and
articles and the names of their directors. Where no convention exists
the status of an immigrant corporation depends upon international
comity, which allows foreign corporations, as it does foreign persons,
to sue, to make contracts and hold real estate, in the same way as
domestic corporations or citizens; provided the stranger corporation
does not offend against the policy of the state in which it seeks to
trade.

There is, however, a growing practice now for states to impose by
express legislation conditions on foreign corporations coming to do
business within their territory. These conditions are mainly directed to
securing that the immigrant corporation shall make known its
constitution and shall be amenable to the jurisdiction of the courts of
the country where it trades. Thus, by the law of Western Australia--to
take a typical instance,--a foreign company is not to commence or carry
on business until it empowers some person to act as its attorney to sue
and be sued and has an office or place of business within