privately held company
Sign in to saveAlso known as private corporation, close corporation, unquoted company, unlisted company, private company, closely held corporation
business with a small number of owners
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- type of business entity
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- Commons category
- Privately held companies
- topic's main category
- Category:Privately held companies
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Encyclopedic overview
A privately held company, or simply private company, is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the company's stock is offered, owned, traded or exchanged privately, also known as "over-the-counter". Related terms are unlisted organization, unquoted company and private equity.
Private companies are often less well-known than their publicly traded counterparts but still have major importance in the world's economy. For example, in 2008, the 441 largest private companies in the United States accounted for $1.8 trillion in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to Forbes.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “privately held company” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.