The correct answer is B) a joint-stock company anxious to return a profit to investors.
Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, was founded by a joint-stock company anxious to return a profit to investors.
We are talking about the Virginia Company of London, an English company that sponsored the first trip to the North American territory with the idea of settling those territories and exploit the raw materials and natural resources to make a profit and be rich. The charter was granted by King James I. That is why the colonists named that first colony, Jamestown.