Legislation passed in 1899 permits companies to be incorporated and chartered in Delaware even if they do no business in the state and hold their stockholders' meetings elsewhere. Another incentive to chartering in Delaware is the state's court of chancery, which has extensive experience in dealing with corporate problems.
The Delaware Economic Development Office (DEDO) seeks to create jobs by helping existing businesses to grow and by encouraging out-of-state companies to relocate to Delaware. The Development Office offers a variety of financing programs for small businesses, including assistance with land acquisition, loans and tax credits for capital investments, and state grants to match federal awards for research and development. The Delaware Innovation Fund is a private, non-profit public/private initiative to assist companies with pre-startup seed money, with long-term loans for establishing patents, business plans, and to begin commercialization ($10,000–$150,000). In the year 2000, the Delaware Economic Development Office Director, and several Delaware lawmakers led a trade mission to Taiwan, establishing a Delaware-Taiwan trade office. In 2003, DEDO was one of 70 organizations participating in bioscience "hotbed" campaign, a concerted effort by a group made up of government development agencies, pharmaceutical and bioscience companies, research institutes, universities, and non-profits to attract capital, personnel and resources to develop a life sciences cluster. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC are recognized as forming a major life sciences hub, dubbed the BioCapital hub by the industry.