Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the difference between private and public limited companies. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the website Asian Briefing, asianbriefing.com, the article is titled: How to Establish a Private Limited Company in Thailand. Quoting directly: "The Government recognizes two types of limited companies; private limited companies and public limited companies. The first is governed by the Civil and Commercial Code and the latter is governed by the Public Limited Company Act." Quoting further: "The FBA governs private limited companies." (the FBA being the Foreign Business Act.)

For those who are unaware, and we have discussed this on many other channels and many other occasions the Foreign Business Act regulates foreign business here in the Kingdom as the title suggests. Those who are foreign nationals with the possible exception of Americans I will get to that in a moment, those who are foreign nationals though looking to set up in the Kingdom generally speaking depending on the type of business activity and in most cases this will be the case, you are going to have to set up with 49% foreign ownership versus 51% Thai ownership under the Foreign Business Act. Now as I have discussed in other videos, the US-Thai Treaty of Amity allows American Companies to do business in Thailand with what is called national treatment. That means they are treated as if they are Thai Companies so if registered and certified under the US-Thai Treaty of Amity, it is possible to have 100% American ownership. But that said, that is the Foreign Business Act.

The question posed by this video is: 'what is the difference between private and public limited companies?" Well the big difference is as the name implies, Public Limited Companies are generally publicly traded; they may be on one of the bourses here in Thailand, traded on for example the SET, the Stock Exchange of Thailand possibly. Again they are governed under an entirely different set of rules and regulations; much more transparency associated with Public Limited Companies. Private Limited Companies as the name suggests, much less transparency. They have to do primarily only with the principals involved. It doesn't have this wide range of shareholders and large Board of Directors, it's usually a much smaller affair.

So again relatively smaller is what you will be looking at with Private Limited Companies and quite a bit less transparent with Private Limited Companies as opposed to publicly traded companies, publicly traded limited companies which generally have a bigger board, more transparency and more regulation and scrutiny they have to deal with.