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by turtletontine 248 days ago
It helps that they’re not a publicly traded company [A]. If you’re beholden to stockholders, you’re beholden to a market demanding growth at all costs. Even if the leadership at the moment wants this stable strategy, all investor pressure tends toward aggressive moves to the contrary.

[A] probably? I couldn’t conclusively determine this, and I’m not an expert

1 comments

Indeed they are not. They are a Austrian GmbH, which is a special kind of company form that is not really comparable to a e.g. British or American Ltd.

Long story short, for being a publicly traded company, they would need to "transform" to an AG ("Aktiengesellschaft", where "Aktie" means "share of stock").

A GmbH is nothing “special”, its basically the most used corporate structure in Austria (and Germany).

Its a limited liability structure and most businesses from small to large that have private shareholders use it (Red Bull or Porsche Holding are GmbHs for example)

As I understood it, GmbH is like an LLC but with more paperwork.