Also known as: publicly-held · public company · publicly traded
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A corporation whose shares are widely distributed among investors and traded on public securities markets rather than concentrated among a small group of owners.
Platinum Partners faces criminal charges in federal district court. As a nongovernmental corporate defendant it must file the required statement. The filing lists Prosperity Investments as the publicly held corporation that owns twelve percent of its shares.
Executives at Pioneer Energy learn of a major undisclosed mineral discovery. They trade shares of the publicly held company before the news reaches the market. Regulators later charge the executives with securities fraud based on that trading.
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Peak Performance, a publicly held issuer, objects to an inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The company argues the board's structure violates separation of powers. The Supreme Court ultimately rejects the constitutional claim.
First National Bank of Boston, a publicly held corporation, seeks to spend corporate funds on a ballot initiative. State law prohibits such expenditures. The Supreme Court holds the restriction violates the First Amendment.
Activists distribute handbills inside a mall owned by Lloyd Corp., a publicly held real estate company. The owners seek to bar the distribution. The Supreme Court holds that the First Amendment does not require the owners to permit the activity.
Paramount Communications Inc., a publicly held company, receives a competing acquisition offer from QVC. The board favors a different bidder. Delaware courts examine whether the directors fulfilled their fiduciary duties to the public shareholders during the sale process.
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.4(a)(1) requires every nongovernmental corporate party in a district-court proceeding to file a statement identifying any publicly held corporation that owns ten percent or more of its stock. The same disclosure obligation appears in the civil rules. Failure to file can delay proceedings until the statement is supplied.
Supporting sources
A closely held business concentrates ownership in a small number of investors whose shares are illiquid. A publicly held business has completed an initial public offering so that its shares trade on a public market and become liquid. Almost all publicly held businesses are organized as C corporations.
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Yes. The initial public offering is the transaction that transforms a company from closely held to publicly held status. Once a trading market develops, the founders' shares become liquid shares of a publicly held company.
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…in trading, he relied on the integrity of the price set by the market. I Prior to December 20, 1978, Basic Incorporated was a publicly traded company primarily engaged in the business of manufacturing chemical refractories for the steel industry. As early as 1965 or 1966, Combustion Engineering, Inc., a company producing mostly…