Privately held company

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 shares are held and transferred privately and are not traded on public stock exchanges. Related terms include unlisted company and unquoted company.^[1]

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.^[2]

A private enterprise is any non-government-owned business, whereas a privately held company is a company whose shares are not publicly traded. This definition encompasses both publicly traded and privately held companies, as their ownership is private rather than governmental.

Private ownership of productive assets differs from state ownership or collective ownership (as in worker-owned companies). This usage is often found in former Eastern Bloc countries to differentiate from former state-owned enterprises, but it may be used anywhere in contrast to a state-owned or a collectively owned company.

In the United States, a privately held company refers to a business entity owned by private stakeholders, investors, or company founders, and its shares are not available for public purchase on stock exchanges. That contrasts with public companies, whose shares are publicly traded, which allows investing by the general public.

In countries with public trading markets, a privately held business is generally taken to mean one whose ownership shares or interests are not publicly traded. Often, privately held companies are owned by the company founders or their families and heirs or by a small group of investors. Sometimes, employees also hold shares in private companies.^[3] Most small businesses are privately held.

Las filiales y empresas conjuntas de compañías que cotizan en bolsa (por ejemplo, Saturn Corporation de General Motors ), a menos que las acciones de la propia filial se negocien directamente, presentan características tanto de empresas privadas como de empresas que cotizan en bolsa. Estas compañías suelen estar sujetas a los mismos requisitos de información que las empresas privadas, pero sus activos, pasivos y actividades también incluyen los informes de sus empresas matrices , tal como lo exigen las normas contables y del sector de valores relativas a los grupos empresariales.

Las empresas privadas pueden denominarse corporaciones , sociedades limitadas , sociedades de responsabilidad limitada , sociedades ilimitadas u otros nombres, según su organización y estructura. En Estados Unidos, aunque no en el Reino Unido , el término también se extiende a sociedades colectivas , empresas unipersonales o fideicomisos empresariales . Cada una de estas categorías puede tener requisitos y restricciones adicionales que pueden afectar a las obligaciones de información, las obligaciones tributarias, las obligaciones gubernamentales, las relaciones laborales, las oportunidades de marketing y otras obligaciones y decisiones empresariales.

En muchos países, existen formas de organización restringidas a las empresas privadas y comúnmente utilizadas por ellas, por ejemplo, la sociedad privada limitada por acciones en el Reino Unido (abreviada Ltd ) o sociedad ilimitada y la sociedad anónima (abreviada Pty Ltd ) o sociedad anónima ilimitada (abreviada Pty ) en Sudáfrica y Australia .

En India , las empresas privadas se registran ante el Registro de Empresas , que depende del Ministerio de Asuntos Corporativos . Las empresas privadas indias deben incluir la palabra «Private Limited» al final de su nombre. ^{[ 4 ]}

Privately held companies generally have fewer or less comprehensive reporting requirements and obligations for transparency, via annual reports, etc. than publicly traded companies do. For example, in the United States, privately held companies are not generally required to publish their financial statements. By not being required to disclose details about their operations and financial outlook, private companies are not forced to disclose information that may potentially be valuable to competitors and so can avoid the immediate erosion of customer and stakeholder confidence in the event of financial duress. Further, with limited reporting requirements and shareholder expectations, private firms are afforded a greater operational flexibility by being able to focus on long-term growth rather than quarterly earnings.

Private companies may also raise capital through private placements, venture capital, or private equity investments without becoming subject to the ongoing disclosure requirements that generally apply to publicly traded companies.^[5]

In addition, private company executives may steer their ships without shareholder approval, which allows them to take significant action without delays.^[6][7]

In Australia, Part 2E of the Corporations Act 2001 requires publicly traded companies to file certain documents relating to their annual general meeting with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). There is a similar requirement for large proprietary companies, which are required to lodge Form 388H to the ASIC containing their financial report. In the United States, private companies are held to different accounting auditing standards than public companies, overseen by the Private Company Counsel division of the Financial Accounting Standards Board.^{(see external links)}

Researching private companies and private companies' financials in the United States can involve contacting the secretary of state for the U.S. state of incorporation (or for LLC or partnership, state of formation), or using specialized private company databases such as Dun & Bradstreet. Many other companies provide aggregated data on privately held companies, segmented by industry code. By contrast, in the United Kingdom, all incorporated companies are registered centrally with Companies House.^[8]

Privately held companies also sometimes have restrictions on how many shareholders they may have. For example, the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, section 12(g), limits a privately held company, generally, to fewer than 2000 shareholders, and the U.S. Investment Company Act of 1940, requires registration of investment companies that have more than 100 holders. In Australia, section 113 of the Corporations Act 2001 limits a privately held company to 50 non-employee shareholders.

A privately owned enterprise is a commercial enterprise owned by private investors, shareholders or owners (usually collectively, but they can be owned by a single individual), and is in contrast to state institutions, such as publicly owned enterprises and government agencies. Private enterprises comprise the private sector of an economy. An economic system that 1) contains a large private sector where privately run businesses are the backbone of the economy, and 2) a business surplus is controlled by the owners, is referred to as capitalism. This contrasts with socialism, where the industry is owned by the state or by all of the community in common. The act of taking assets into the private sector is referred to as privatization.

A privately owned enterprise is one form that private property may take.

• Limited company
• Private company limited by shares
• Private equity
• Public company
• Unlisted public company

• Consejo de Empresas Privadas Archivado el 07/01/2016 en Wayback Machine , parte del Consejo de Normas de Contabilidad Financiera