Huh? I'm pretty sure that the British corporations work the same way as US, since personhood is pretty much the defining aspect of a corporation. If I want a licence to make ARM processors I would go to some person who "ARM Holdings plc" has authorized to act on said corporation's behalf. Then I would sign a contract with "ARM Holdings plc". And even if the person I signed the contract with left the company, or the president of ARM went to work somewhere else, or even all the employees and all the shareholders were replaced my contract with "ARM Holdings plc" would still be valid. Likewise there's no one person who can just sell off all of ARM's assets if they feel like it.
This is how most of the world does it, as far as I can tell, though in traditional Islamic law you only had business partnerships that dissolved if any of the members left.
There are various arguments against having authority reside in abstract entities rather than real people, but I hope you can see how it can be good in the case of democratic governments at least, like the City of London Corportation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
EDIT: To be more clear, pretty much all businesses are some sort of corporation, even though most people use "Corporation" to refer to publicly traded joint stock corporations. All non-profit organizations are also corporations. Some (but by no means all) municipalities are also legally corporations, but I'm not sure exactly what the distinction between that and other forms is.
EDIT2: Reading some more in Wikipedia, I might be using the word "corporation" too loosely in the above, and there are also plane companies and partnerships that are incorporated entities but not corporations, and have the same sort of legal person hood that corporations do.
This is how most of the world does it, as far as I can tell, though in traditional Islamic law you only had business partnerships that dissolved if any of the members left.
There are various arguments against having authority reside in abstract entities rather than real people, but I hope you can see how it can be good in the case of democratic governments at least, like the City of London Corportation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
EDIT: To be more clear, pretty much all businesses are some sort of corporation, even though most people use "Corporation" to refer to publicly traded joint stock corporations. All non-profit organizations are also corporations. Some (but by no means all) municipalities are also legally corporations, but I'm not sure exactly what the distinction between that and other forms is.
EDIT2: Reading some more in Wikipedia, I might be using the word "corporation" too loosely in the above, and there are also plane companies and partnerships that are incorporated entities but not corporations, and have the same sort of legal person hood that corporations do.