Privately Held Company

Definition

Privately Held Company. A firm whose issued shares are all held by a family or a small group of investors and, therefore, cannot be bought by the public.

Synonyms

• Closed Corporation

Issues and Challenges

Wikipedia: definition for British or Commonwealth version: A private company limited by shares is a type of company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales, Scotland, that of certain Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland. It has shareholders with limited liability and its shares may not be offered to the general public, unlike those of public limited companies. Additional notes from Wikipedia: Limited by shares means that the company has shareholders, and that the liability of the shareholders to creditors of the company is limited to the capital originally invested, i.e. the nominal value of the shares and any premium paid in return for the issue of the shares by the company. A shareholders personal assets are thereby protected in the event of the companys insolvency, but money invested in the company will be lost. A limited company may be private or public. A private limited companys disclosure requirements are lighter, but for this reason its shares may not be offered to the general public (and therefore cannot be traded on a public stock exchange). This is the major distinguishing feature between a private limited company and a public limited company. Most companies, particularly small companies, are private. Private companies limited by shares are required to have the suffix Limited (often written Ltd or Ltd.) or Incorporated (Inc.) as part of their name, though the latter cannot be used in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, Teoranta (Teo.) may be used instead, largely by Gaeltacht companies. Cyfyngedig (Cyf.) may be used by Welsh companies in a similar fashion.

See Also

• http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/closed-corporation.html

Disclaimer

This entry annotates a FIBO Ontology Class. FIBO is a trademark and the FIBO Ontology is copyright of the EDM Council, released under the MIT Open Source License. There is no guarantee that the content of this page will remain aligned with, or correctly interprets, the concepts covered by the FIBO ontology.