[talmand]

As I'm not aware of the differences between Swedish and US ideas of companies, what is the concept of a privately held company versus a publicly traded company in Sweden? If the comparison holds, are the annual reports of privately held companies public information in Sweden as well?

[Chrono]

Mojang is privately held but they submit an annual report to the tax authority and once OK'ed by them in the public domain so it can be requested from the authority. There are several companies that log all registered companies and their annual reports and publish them (For a fee to get a pdf of the report) online so it is not directly public per say.

It is also worth noting that privately held companies don't have as extravagant annual reports as the publicly traded ones, just plain boring reports but the essential information is the same.

Personally I like the system for it satisfies my curiosity and I don't see any reason why a company should be able to hide their broader financials - I want the ability to check their solvency before using their services for example.

Anyone could access, at least part, of my personal tax records as well as my grades from High school (and Uni I believe). All in all it is very hard to be anonymous in Sweden if someone bothers to look around.

[talmand]

Now that you say all that, I seem to recall that level of openness being mentioned in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.