The English financial backers of explorers Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers and Pierre-Esprit Radisson formed a corporation that received its charter on 2 May 1670 and which has been known since then as the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). Like several of its predecessors in the settlement of English colonies in North America, the HBC was a joint stock company with governing powers and territorial rights in much of the northern part of the continent.