Public and Private Companies

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Public and Private Companies :

Public company : A public company is a company owned by the public rather than by relatively few individuals.
There are two different meanings for this term.
The first is a company that is owned by stockholders who are members of the general public and trade shares publicly, often through a listing on a stock exchange. The first company to issue shares is thought to be the Dutch East India Company in 1602. Ownership is open to anyone that has the money and inclination to buy shares in the company.
It is differentiated from privately held companies where the shares are held by a small group of individuals, who are often members of one or a small group of families or otherwise related individuals, or other companies. The variant of this type of company in the United Kingdom and Ireland is known as a public limited company.

The second is a government-owned corporation. This meaning of a "public company" comes from the tradition of public ownership of assets and interests by and for the people as a whole

Private company : The term privately held company refers to ownership of a business company in two different ways—
first, referring to ownership by non-governmental organizations;
and second, referring to ownership of the company's stock by a relatively small number of holders who do not trade the stock publicly.