[mytailorisrich]

Not sure what your definition of "privatized" is... fully state-owned means it isn't privatised at all.

The issue is one of legal status. In most countries you can be a commercial company or essentially a branch of the government (leaving aside coops and charities).

So in general you have companies (legal status) but they are fully owned by the state, hence "state-owned company". "Privatized" means the government decided to sell most or all the shares to the public.

Counter example is the USPS in the US, which is an agency of the Federal government.

[ketzu]

> Not sure what your definition of "privatized" is

Maybe this is a language barrier issue. Companies organized as AG, GmbH etc. under private law, in opposition to branches of the government or special institutions of public law. This is commonly called "Bahnprivatisierung" in Germany.

The Deutsche Bahn was "privatized" in the sense that it was moved from public law to private law based organization.

[mytailorisrich]

Yes, that's exactly what I explained in term of legal status, but that's not what "privatized" means.

[ketzu]

Now I get it, thanks for the effort of clarifying. I thought it was a misunderstanding of a niche meaning of "privatized" but it turns out, english and german do not share that meaning. Unfortunately I can't edit the comment to change the word anymore.

It seems "privatization" in english is still a very murky word, even though it does not include this meaning :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization I'll try to stop calling deutsche bahn "privatized" in english.

[1718627440]

"Bahnprivatisierung" is the official term for what happened to the German railway in the 90s. I think this it what the term means.