Private companies

A privately held company, private company, or close corporation is a business company owned either by non-governmental organizations or by a relatively small number of shareholders or company members which does not offer or trade its company (shares) to the general public on the exchanges, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned and traded or exchanged privately. More ambiguous terms for a privately held company are unquoted company and unlisted company.

Though less visible than their publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 largest private companies in the United States accounted for US$1,800,000,000,000 in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to Forbes. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on Forbes' survey of closely held U.S. businesses sold a trillion dollars' worth of goods and services (44%) and employed 4 million people. In 2004, the Forbes' count of privately held U.S. businesses with at least $1 billion in revenue was 305.

Cargill, Koch Industries, Bechtel, Publix, Pilot Corp., Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (a member of the Big Four group of accounting firms), Hearst Corporation, Cox Enterprises, S. C. Johnson, McWane, Carlson Companies, and Mars are among the largest privately held companies in the United States. KPMG, the UK accounting firms Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, IKEA, Trafigura, J C Bamford Excavators (JCB), Lidl, Aldi, LEGO, Maersk, Bosch, Rolex, Ferrero, Bertelsmann and Victorinox are some examples of Europe's largest privately held companies.

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