publicly held

Related to publicly held: Publicly held company

Publicly held

Describes a company whose stock is held by the public, whether individuals or business entities.

Publicly-Traded Company

A company issuing stocks, which are traded on the open market, either on a stock exchange or on the over-the-counter market. Individual and institutional shareholders constitute the owners of a publicly-traded company, in proportion to the amount of stock they own as a percentage of all outstanding stock. Thus, shareholders have final say in all decisions taken by a publicly-traded company and its managers, especially through its annual shareholders' meeting. Publicly-traded companies have greater access to financing than other companies, as they have the ability to issue more stock. However, they are subject to greater regulation: for example, they must file 10-K reports with the SEC on their earnings and they are more likely to be subject to corporate taxes. A publicly-traded company is also called a public company.

publicly held

1. Of, relating to, or being securities that are freely transferable among investors. For example, stock owned by institutional investors is publicly held, but unregistered stock held by a firm's founder is not publicly held.

2. Of, relating to, or being a publicly traded company.

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

Forty-five instances in which the firm's retirement plan owned securities of publicly held companies that were audit clients of either Coopers & Lybrand or Price Waterhouse.

PWC relaxes position on employee investments

When managers of publicly held companies announce such decisions, the price of the company's stock often increases as investors respond to the company's decision.

Proposed Section 162(m) regulations on deductions for executive compensation

A recent IRS letter ruling involved a publicly held corporation with a shareholder-approved stock option plan.

Performance-based compensation

Has not been an officer of the publicly held corporation; and

Compensation committee passes Sec. 162(m) muster with recusal of non-outside directors

The ED uses a hypothetical traditional firm ("Oldfirm") purchased by a publicly held corporation as an example.

"Alternative" structures and government accountants

My study of audit committee functions that were specifically disclosed in the proxy statements or annual reports of the 251 largest publicly held U.

Benchmarking the audit committee

The division--the commission's largest--is responsible for seeing that disclosure requirements are met in financial documents of publicly held companies.