State Ownership Vs. Private Ownership
In the broadest sense, the term private corporation refers to any business not owned by the state. This usage is often found in former Communist countries to differentiate from former state-owned enterprises, but it may be used anywhere when contrasting to a state-owned company.
In the United States, the term privately held company is more often used to describe for-profit enterprises whose shares are not traded on the stock market.
Read more about this topic: Privately Held Company
Famous quotes containing the words state, ownership and/or private:
“I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour ... was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It breedeth no small offence and scandal to see and consider upon the one part the curiosity and cost bestowed by all sorts of men upon their private houses; and on the other part the unclean and negligent order and spare keeping of the houses of prayer by permitting open decays and ruins of coverings of walls and windows, and by appointing unmeet and unseemly tables with foul cloths for the communion of the sacrament.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)