Effect of Registration:
S.16(2) of the Act provides that "from the date of incorporation mentioned in the certificate of incorporation the subscribers to the memorandum of association... shall be a body corporate by the name contained in the memorandum". Therefore this section has been judicially explained as follows:
(a) The date mentioned (i.e. written) in the certificate of incorporation is the date from which the company's legal existence commences. Subsequently whether an incorrect date is written in the certificate in which date would be regarded as the actual date on which the company was registered. This legal position was explained by the House of Lords, under the English Companies Act whose provisions in this regard are identical to s.16(2) of the Kenya Companies Act, in the case of Jubilee Cotton Mills v Lewis (2)
(b) The company's registration constitutes it "a body corporate". It becomes "a legal person", or "corpora corporata", whose name is the name chosen for it by its promoters and written in its memorandum of association. The certificate of incorporation may therefore be regarded as the company's birth certificate and the date written therein as the company's birthday.