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.

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.

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