Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In my view there are a number of things in the Corporate space which are being completely overlooked.

How many of us issue and use shares properly?

I have a few shareholders (some of which are on inactive accounts) and because there is no way of transferring shares short of "giving" them, I have found it difficult to ask for the shares to be returned, whether for a fee or not. I understand that there is little mechanic for establishing the value of a corporation and therefore the value of the shares, but to be able to say to people who have left the corp "I'll offer you {amount} ISK per share" I would need to have a way of honouring that trade without one party taking it as an element of faith that the cash will follow once the shares have been transferred. At present the shares can't be contracted or sold on the market. Perhaps if there were more ways of transferring shares, they would be used more by people to issue dividends, enforce votes, and raise capital, in the same way that the current shares market works IRL.
Perhaps this would give rise to a mini-profession related to the trader, that of share trading.

Why can't alliances make bills for corporations?

it's VERY common practice among alliances (especially in Losec) to bill corporations for membership of an alliance. Often this is on the basis of how much resource they are consuming (e.g. how many towers they have up), which is subject to change.
What would be REALLY useful is a way of setting up bills through the existing billing mechanism for Offices, providing Alliances with a way of automatically issuing bills to corporations for use of their services. The alternate mechanism is a time-consuming one where people have to chase other people by email for payment of these bills.
This could also be extended to setting up fixed-time bills to corp members in return for products (e.g. I will give you this Hulk, but I will set up 10 monthly bills of 10mil each in return) - I don't propose that the "title" issues similar to those in place for the UK Consumer Credit act (1974) (which would mean that upon default the traded product returns to the owner) be enforced, merely that the billing structure would be able to be set up through the interface by a person of appropriate role (e.g. Director).

Why doesn't the same mechanism for voting in Corporations exist for Alliances?

If Alliances had shares as well, it would be possible for voting to occur in Alliances in the same way as it works in Corporations. This would allow for a more democratic mechanism for decision-making in Alliances, should that be required. It would also allow for share trading and dividend, perhaps as a result of profit from the alliances billing. I suspect that this might have to be accompanied by the creation of wallets for alliances which might be a step too far. Executor Corporations, however, could act as the holding wallet for the alliance share dividend and billing functions instead of extending wallet functions to alliances, if this is not practical for implementation.