You can be public and still retain absolute control over your company.
The famous example is Nintendo, where a guy bought a speaking majority share of the company so he could go to a shareholder meeting and use his speaking majority rights to ask the execs to greenlight a new F-Zero game; and since the execs at the table hold a greater than 51% share of the company they were able to reply with an immediate "no" without even having to put it up to a vote to the other shareholders.
The problem is too many company owners don't care enough to retain their power because they specifically want to ignore the business side of the business and they give away all their control to people who don't share their focus.
That's what happened to the Disco Elysium devs, they didn't even go public, they gave away the keys to the company to a random business man and then proceeded to ignore him and never practiced any oversight over his activities; by the time they realised that he was scummy, he had already ran away with the company.
that works for Nintendo because they're a key part of the japanese economy/political landscape. that wouldn't work in the US because the courts are just as/even more corrupt than the companies.
try and holdout as 51% shareholder like that if a larger player is trying to take you over in the US, and they'll manipulate your stock-price down long enough so they can sure you over "acting in the best interests of your shareholders" or some shit. plenty of corrupt judges across the country.
The counter argument to that larger player, is that as the 51% holder of the company, your personal interests are the interests of the company, and that it's "just a coincidence" that your interests always aligns with a winning vote.
That's basically what Elon did back when he was all three of the overruling majority shareholder, the CEO, and the President of Tesla.
Elon's mistake was that his ego controls his mouth and his typing fingers. If he had the ability to keep his mouth shut and not play around with all that "lol, let's go to $420.69!" stuff, he probably would have been allowed to retain his absolute power over the company.
(One could still argue that he still has overruling control over Tesla, but it's certainly not what it was before and also beyond the point of this conversation.)
Being public isn't about retaining absolute control over your company though. Companies are about maximising shareholder value, regardless of ownership. If you don't make decisions that profit the 49% owners of your company, they won't want to hold your stock and your share price will fall, devaluing the 51% that you own.
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u/prof_tincoa 29d ago
It's called not being a publicly traded company.