Quotes & Sayings About Private Companies

Competition leads both drug companies and private regulators to be trustworthy. If they are not trustworthy, they die. — John Stossel

Private equity helps produce strong companies, promotes innovation and spurs job growth. — N. Robert Hammer

In taking Dell private, we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in history. — Michael Dell

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies. — Bill Gates

In particular, I want to set a challenge to public bodies and private companies to improve gender balance on their own boards. — Nicola Sturgeon

The Ministry places great importance and focus on the waste management issue as one of the most pressing priorities in the UAE, given its economic, social, environmental and medical effects. The Ministry addresses this issue through two approaches, the first in limiting the generation of waste form the source, by organizing awareness programs that target families and individuals, or by regulations and developing a national regulatory framework for waste management. The second revolves around the reuse and recycling of waste as a national commitment and one of the major objectives of the national agenda of the UAE Vision 2021. We all hope that we can strengthen the cooperation between the public and private sector in that domain, and encourage private companies to play a more vital role in waste management in a way that exceeds corporate social responsibility initiatives. — Anonymous

I think what I brought from the private sector was a real appreciation of how much leverage - respect, if you will - that the SEC has. Major companies, in particular, really don't want to be at war with their primary regulator. The SEC may not have appreciated just how great our leverage is. — Mary Jo White

Some in Westminster have talked about her receiving a state funeral when she dies, which seems a bizarre sort of tribute to someone who believed the state should do as little as possible. It would be far more appropriate to allow competitive bids from private companies to run the funeral arrangements. 'And we now go over live to Westminster, where state leaders are lining up for Lady Thatcher's funeral sponsored by McDonald's. And there we see the coffin respectfully borne on the shoulders of six part-time burger-flippers dressed in the official Ronald McDonald costume, before the private cremation when the body will be flame-grilled with gherkins and a slice of cheese.'
It's what she would have wanted. — John O'Farrell

Private insurance companies in America are reaping huge profits. — Bernie Sanders

This is something the Democrats have talked about, and a goal we share, getting everyone insured, and solving the issue in a Republican way, which is applying a personal responsibility principle (individual mandate), reforming the market (more strictly regulating the insurance companies), and allowing people to buy private health care insurance that they can take with them from job to job that's entirely affordable. So it's a Republican way of solving a problem that we face as a nation. — Mitt Romney

As president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, I have seen private equity firms plunder company after company, taking rich fees for themselves and cutting costs until there's nothing left to cut. Time and again I've seen their reckless behavior drive companies to declare bankruptcy. — James P. Hoffa

I'm invested in about 13 private companies. I've advised probably another 50 private companies. — James Altucher

Private companies have a lot of capital. They can run things efficiently and get projects built. — Steve Martin

Do any of the private companies send reps or IT guys here? — John Scalzi

The spy boom has been a beautiful windfall for architects, construction companies, IT specialists, and above all defense contractors, enriching thousands of private companies and dozens of local economies hugging the Capital Beltway. — Rachel Maddow

I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds. — Ehud Barak

People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt. — Arundhati Roy

There's a tendency for those unfamiliar with cooperatives to look down on them as the leftovers of the mainstream economy, implying that if these ideologically driven people simply reorganized themselves into "normal" private companies, they would be more efficient and productive. In fact, just the opposite is true: Cooperatives often enter into economic activities that private businesses will not take on. The most fertile period of cooperative growth was during the Great Depression. Rural electric cooperatives spread across the American plains when it became clear that other investor-owned and municipally owned utilities were uninterested in wiring up sparsely populated regions. Credit unions, as we'll soon explore, have seen an upsurge during the recent financial crisis. — Michael Shuman

The big companies are the private industry. But they're faced with a short-term need to show a profit in short-term. — Buzz Aldrin

Litigation funders are private companies that raise money from their investors to buy into big lawsuits. — John Grisham

We ought to start running the government like a private-sector business. I have that ability as CEO of our companies. I have line item vetoes, and if I didn't, we'd probably be out of business by now. — John Raese

The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organised and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. Private slave-trading companies sold shares on the Amsterdam, London and Paris stock exchanges. Middle-class Europeans looking for a good investment bought these shares. Relying on this money, the companies bought ships, hired sailors and soldiers, purchased slaves in Africa, and transported them to America. There they sold the slaves to the plantation owners, using the proceeds to purchase plantation products such as sugar, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton and rum. — Yuval Noah Harari

Hoffland, as it was called, was, next to Moda Polska (simply "Polish Fashion") one of the rare examples of the quasi-private, though officially nationalized fashion companies in Poland. Both have survived communism, and Hoff kept designing well into the 90s. You could be sure, that if Hoff wrote about a new style for wearing a shawl in her column, the same afternoon there would already be dozens of girls on the streets trying to copy this style. Her flagship idea was blackening the "coffin shoes" (i.e. light, paper shoes, used as footwear for the deceased) which when colored black could pass as elegant "ballerinas". — Agata Pyzik

States were barred from financing their immigration systems with specific taxes on immigrants and transportation companies, leaving the continued existence of these state institutions to the general state fisc or the generosity of private charitable organizations interested in immigrant welfare and integration. The resource strain on states and charitable organizations placed enormous pressure on Congress to enact federal law. — Pratheepan Gulasekaram

There are areas using what's called the "checkerboard strategy." They are different cities where you can move around the "checkerboard," doing things you can't do in every square, that you can do in some of them, building a mosaic of these kinds of practices. There are about 400 cable television networks, for example, that are publicly owned. That's a big fight for big private companies. In some areas, this is a political struggle, in some it's conventional common sense. — Gar Alperovitz

Why is it that private insurance companies are not in trouble because people are getting older? Aren't they subject to the same demographics? The difference is that they've accumulated a fund, not a pay-in, pay-out system. — Milton Friedman

When private industry makes a mistake, it gets corrected and goes away. As governments make mistakes, it gets bigger, bigger and bigger and they make more, more and more because as they run out of money, they just ask for more and so they get rewarded for making mistakes. In the meantime that is exactly what we are doing by subsidizing companies which are failing, we have a reverse Darwinism, we've got survival of the unfittest, the companies and people that have made terrible mistakes are being rewarded and other people are being punished and being taxed. — Peter Schiff

The work I have done in private practice has been assisting companies and organizations to work with an incredibly complex federal government. I'm proud of the impact I've had for these organizations, including organizations here in Pinellas County. — David Jolly

I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren't that many serious practitioners. — Wilbur Ross

People don't trust private health insurance companies for all the right reasons. — Bernie Sanders

I think empirically the reason people might think that wouldn't work is they are going to ask, how could anybody ever agree on having a fair judge? They would always just want the judge that was going to be sympathetic to their perspective. But we just see that's not true. Empirically it does work. There is private arbitration. Companies, when they have disputes with their employees and so forth, and they have clauses in the contracts saying "private arbitration," they go to these people. It's not like there are widespread allegations of unfairness. If there is a market for arbitration services, the way you stay in business is by having a reputation of doing a fair job of it. — Anonymous

From a business perspective, we are trying to propose some suggestions to the government. Not only to benefit Fosun, but to benefit all private enterprises, especially proposals to help small to medium-sized companies. — Guo Guangchang

Private citizens and companies are always seen as evil and greedy, because they want to profit. But the government picks your pocket any chance it can get, but they're never called greedy. — Greg Gutfeld

What I'd like to see is a private [healthcare] system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I'm negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians. — Donald Trump

People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient. — David Rubenstein

In short, then, state companies have most of the assets, fill oligopolistic and thus profitable economic positions, receive virtually all bank credit (and at preferential rates), represent most of the stock market capitalisation and generate most of the profit. Private enterprises constitute most of the companies, provide most of the jobs, dominate exports, represent over two-thirds of economic activity and drive the economy. When analysed, this presents a rather unusual picture and demonstrates why there is a strong lobby against further economic reform. — Timothy Beardson

Across the nation, the election protection movement attracts ordinary citizens who educate their neighbors about their voting systems and the private companies that built and run them. — Mimi Kennedy

I don't understand why young entrepreneurs feel this pressure to take venture capital or go public. Don't get me wrong: Public companies are A-OK with me. I just think there is another way. Staying private is a lot more sane. — Jack Dangermond

Fortunately we're not a public company - we're a private group of companies, and I can do what I want. — Richard Branson

This enterprise may sound a little strange to us, but in the early modern age it was common for private companies to hire not only soldiers, but also generals and admirals, cannons and ships, and even entire off-the-shelf armies. The international community took this for granted and didn't raise an eyebrow when a private company established an empire. — Yuval Noah Harari

Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home
but not for housing. They are strong for labor
but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage
the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all
but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine
for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing
but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing
so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it. — Harry Truman

The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service's 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third - 49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio - is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut, — Bill Bryson

But it is a worry that there have been so many delays in the reform of China's state-owned enterprises. We all know that private companies are run more efficiently than state ones. These reforms are very much anticipated for the potential dynamism they could create. — Zhang Xin

I understand when there's no money for the arts in the government, but it should maybe pressure private companies to support more filmmakers. These exhibition and distribution companies are huge, and there might be incentives for them to invest more in Mexican cinema. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

We've got to simplify, pull back all these layers of supposed complexity , and get down to the essentials. If we want people to engage with government, we should use the same tools that are getting them engages with companies and institutions in private life. If we want people to care about political issues, we should give them a way to understand and get involved in them. — Gavin Newsom

Private companies should be building businesses. — Peter Diamandis

It ends a 40-year ban on exporting U.S. oil. It's changed - it's included in its cyber-security legislation - that says to private companies, hey, if you share with us your data on your cyber-attacks, your potential cyber-attacks, we'll give you liability protection. And they authorized a health care program for 9/11 responders for 75 years to cover the length of their lifespans. — Susan Davis

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money. — James Surowiecki

It's a negative for the country. It implicates dozens of private companies, many of which are made up of honest people. It besmirches the office of the U.S. Senate and is bad for the country's morale. Dishonest politicians hurt all politicians. Americans need to trust their leaders. This would be an ugly investigation — Dan Brown

In developing countries the situation could be even worse because developing countries do not have to count their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Private companies from industrialized nations will seek cheap carbon credits for their country in the developing world. — Jennifer Morgan

Unbeknownst to most American investors, significant portions of their public pension, mutual fund, life insurance and private portfolios are comprised of stocks of privately held companies that partner with state sponsors of terror. — Frank Gaffney

The most important thing for us is investing and making companies great, and then they have all the options they want, whether that's to go public or stay private. — David Sze

But influential business leaders were eager proponents of numbers-driven merit pay for teachers. Ross Perot, for example, pushed Dallas to implement a plan to use test scores alone to evaluate teachers and distribute pay increases. So it was ironic that private industry had, by the 1980s, mostly turned away from efforts to pay white-collar workers according to strict productivity measures, finding that such formal evaluation programs were too expensive and time-consuming to create and implement. Research showed that companies with merit pay schemes did not perform better financially than did organizations without it, nor were their employees happier. Instead, management gurus recommended that workers be judged primarily by the holistic standards of individual supervisors. — Dana Goldstein

Any bailout of a private company is a bad decision by our federal government. Private companies have the right to succeed, but they also should have the right to fail. — Matt Salmon

Today, we have private airline companies, but if you take a look at a Boeing plane next time you travel, you'll see that you are basically taking a ride on a modified bomber. — Noam Chomsky

Small and mid-sized companies in this country historically have been responsible for creating the overwhelming majority of new jobs in the private sector. One of the most-common misconceptions about our private enterprise system is that large companies, such as the Fortune 500, are integral to the process of job creation in this country. The truth is quite the opposite. — Michael Milken

Obamacare is a program designed to shift control of the health care industry from the private sector to the public sector, from doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies to the federal government. The program was sold by Obama feigning outrage over insurance companies refusing to grant insurance to people with "preexisting conditions." But this is the same as an insurance company not granting fire insurance to a guy whose house has already burned down. The whole point of insurance is to share the risk before the catastrophe occurs, not to have a catastrophe and then get other people to pay for your losses. — Dinesh D'Souza

Insurance companies, whether private or government owned, must be compelled to pay for health-promoting measures. In turn, this will encourage physicians to offer such treatments in earnest. — Andrew Weil

The first English settlements in North America were established in the early seventeenth century by joint-stock companies such as the London Company, the Plymouth Company, the Dorchester Company and the Massachusetts Company. The Indian subcontinent too was conquered not by the British state, but by the mercenary army of the British East India Company. This company outperformed even the VOC. From its headquarters in Leadenhall Street, London, it ruled a mighty Indian empire for about a century, maintaining a huge military force of up to 350,000 soldiers, considerably outnumbering the armed forces of the British monarchy. Only in 1858 did the British crown nationalise India along with the company's private army. Napoleon made fun of the British, calling them a nation of shopkeepers. Yet these shopkeepers defeated Napoleon himself, and their empire was the largest the world has ever seen. — Yuval Noah Harari

We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies. — Stephen Pagliuca

I think there's a time to be private and a time to be public, and I think that companies like Facebook and Groupon are basically transformational companies. You don't come across them very often, and I'm pretty sure that they can continue to grow for a long time even being public. — Yuri Milner

The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own ... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. — Adam Smith

The increase in salaries at private companies has exploded, and Romania also faces a labor shortage, especially in construction. We believe that the Romanian market will remain an incentive, so that migration will not be an issue. — Traian Basescu

There should be no private health insurance companies operating for profit. — Michael Moore

Every city and town in America would be bankrupt if they kept their books the way private-sector companies keep their books - because of the obligation cities and towns have taken upon themselves to provide health care for their retirees. — Clayton M Christensen

The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money. — Bill Gates

I have publicly talked about Mexico's need to open ourselves up to the participation of the private sector in the energy sector, however this doesn't mean privatizing state-run companies. — Enrique Pena Nieto

Privatization, of course, is based on yet another myth: that government-run programs must be inefficient, and privatization accordingly must be better. In fact, as we noted in chapter 6, the transaction costs of Social Security and Medicare are much, much lower than those of private-sector firms providing comparable services. This should not come as a surprise. The objective of the private sector is to make profits - for private companies, transactions costs are a good thing; the difference between what they take in and what they pay out is what they want to maximize.31 — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The question arises whether private companies can bear responsibility when considering the large risks involved with nuclear business. — Naoto Kan

In the economy we guarantee all market players the same conditions, and the private sector plays an increasingly important role. We are in the process of dissolving thousands of state-owned companies and converting them into stock corporations. We even plan to accelerate this development. In contrast, it is the party's responsibility to improve the lives of the people, and this is where our citizens have great confidence in us. Party members who commit crimes are severely punished. — Nguyen Minh Triet

Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far. — Studs Terkel

I don't want to be a lobbyist. I want to provide strategic advice to companies. I said both of those things in the course of the interview, and I made clear this is a matter only for after I had become a private citizen and I was no longer a member of parliament. — Geoff Hoon

There are corporate private investigators, companies doing very forensic background checks on people. They buy data, they get their own data ... They don't want their industry publicised. — Heather Brooke

For over 15 years, through the clean coal programs of the Department of Energy, the Federal Government has been a solid partner, working jointly with private companies and the states to develop and demonstrate a new generation of environmentally clean technology using coal. — Tim Holden

Everybody says they want to have private providers and we're saying fine. Let the states negotiate on behalf of a population in your state to drive down your costs. Don't just give subsidies to insurance companies for expensive insurance. — Maria Cantwell

In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners. — Henry Kravis

Nathanael hadn't delivered any specific message; the angel's parting words, which had boomed out across the entire visitation site, were the typical Behold the power of the Lord. Of the eight casualties that day, three souls were accepted into Heaven and five were not, a closer ratio than the average for deaths by all causes. Sixty-two people received medical treatment for injuries ranging from slight concussions to ruptured eardrums to burns requiring skin grafts. Total property damage was estimated at $8.1 million, all of it excluded by private insurance companies due to the cause. Scores of people became devout worshipers in the wake of the visitation, either out of gratitude or terror. Alas, — Ted Chiang

History suggests that attempts to privatize Medicare by relying on private companies to offer Medicare benefits in rural America simply will not work. — Bennie Thompson

I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies
NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science
but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits. — Buzz Aldrin

the Army contracts private carriers to handle the overflow. In the Gulf War, they even had to resort to forcing major airline companies to cough up planes to make ends meet, under a compulsive federal system known as the Civilian Reserve Airfleet Program (my favorite government acronym of all time). — Piers Platt

I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up. — Jim Rogers

Finally, we spend lots of money. Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today. Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to create new crimes, impose harsher sentences, and keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety, reduce the costs of mass incarceration, and most significantly, promote rehabilitation of the incarcerated. — Bryan Stevenson

The private sector is the key player in cyber security. Private sector companies are the primary victims of cyber intrusions. And they also possess the information, the expertise, and the knowledge to address cyber intrusions and cyber crime in general. — James Comey

Obamacare is socialism? Nope - as insurance companies vie to sell new policies, competition within private industry is growing rapidly, with the number of participating insurers growing by 26 percent between 2014 and 2015, and the number of products they offer growing by 66 percent. — Kurt Eichenwald

I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs. — Stephen Pagliuca

It's clear to me when you do private equity well, you're making companies more efficient and helping them grow and become more profitable. That success means our investors - such as public pension funds - benefit, which contributes to the economic wealth of society. — David Rubenstein

For years, recycling programs proved unprofitable, and private institutions failed time and time again to create comprehensive programs that would dramatically reduce litter. Expensive recycling programs survived as the preferred and exclusive solution for solid-waste disposal in this country only because private corporations used their lobbying might to shift responsibility for the collection and recycling of corporate waste onto the public sector. In the end, consumers did most of the work, subsidizing (both through their labor and through taxes) the beverage industry's packaging-reclamation system, allowing companies to expand their operations without incurring increased costs. — Bartow J. Elmore

Today, our economy is divided: fifty percent is the public economy and fifty percent is the private economy that includes small companies employing from 4 to 200 workers. — Ibrahim Rugova

To economists, prices serve as crucial signals to producers and consumers. In a regulated market, the state sets prices high enough for private companies to cover their costs and earn a guaranteed profit for their investors. But in a deregulated market, prices should vary with demand and supply. — Alex Berenson

Real security will come when it's a moneymaker for private companies who want to satisfy public demand for an Internet that isn't crawling with bugs. — David Ignatius

For most Indians in America, wealth is not inherited. Neither do we make it as heads of large hedge funds and private equity funds. For us to make it to the top, we have to use our knowhow to create great new technology products and build high-tech companies. — Romesh Wadhwani

The American public doesn't mourn contractor deaths the way we do the deaths of our soldiers. We rarely even hear about them. Private companies are under no obligation to report when their employees are killed while, say, providing armed security to tractor-trailer convoys running supplies into Iraq. In the 1991 Gulf War, the United States employed one private contract worker for every one hundred American soldiers on the ground; in the Clinton-era Balkans, it neared one to one - about 20,000 privateers tops. In early 2011, there were 45,000 US soldiers stationed inside Iraq, and 65,000 private contract workers there. — Rachel Maddow

I think there are a lot of companies that are staying private longer. Much more of their growth is happening while they are on the private side. So their valuations are hitting $1 billion while they are still private more often. — David Sze

It took a little over a decade to build a coalition strong enough to beat the insurance companies, but in 1990, then Senator Tom Daschle and I passed a law regulating the private market for supplemental Medicare insurance policies. — Ron Wyden

As we settle into 2013, I predict this: We'll see companies that promote this shift from private ownership thrive. More people will be able to access things they simply don't need to own, and they'll save money and live better, cleaner, green lives doing it. — Lynn Jurich

With leading research universities, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and private companies like Blue Sun working on developing alternative fuels, Colorado is poised to become an international leader in clean energy. — Ken Salazar

There's a good argument to be made that companies that are private, where they're run by partnerships, where everybody has true stake in them and they're not playing with other people's money, that by default it's a safer system, because you really have skin in the game. You really own the company. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I'm one of those people who believes that part of the greatness of the United States is our private sector. It's what we do as private citizens for ourselves and our companies. And our economy is essentially the wonder of the world because, in fact, it's produced so much for us over the years. That's not government that does that. — Dick Cheney

AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II, I was a New Dealer to the core. I thought government could solve all our postwar problems just as it had ended the Depression and won the war. I didn't trust big business. I thought government, not private companies, should own our big public utilities; if there wasn't enough housing to shelter the American people, I thought government should build it; if we needed better medical care, the answer was socialized medicine. — Ronald Reagan

We are highly committed to international cooperation, development of public-private partnerships. To use the potential of large companies that have already been through the steps that we are taking now would be beneficial for the development of the country's healthcare system — Veronika Skvortsova