What kind of business is owned by stockholders?

Answer 1

Corporations

Corporations distribute ownership stakes in the form of shares, also called stock. In many private corporations, all of the stock is owned by one person or family. That one person or the family members that own the shares are all shareholders. Public corporations, those firms whose share trade on a public stock exchange (i.e. The New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, etc.) are also also owned by the people who own the stock. The distribution of the stock of public corporations is usually much, much larger than of private firms. Many large corporations (i.e. Microsoft, GE, Exxon-Mobil) have more than one million stock holders. All of those businesses are owned by the people who own the stock. The more stock one owns, the more of the business that person owns.

As to the kind or type of business owned by stockholders, the short answer is "for-profit" businesses. Almost any kind of for-profit business can use the corporate form of ownership. In the past, there were strict requirements issued by the stock exchanges that businesses had to meet in order to list their shares. Those requirements included a certain level of revenue, a history of profitability and/or a threshold of assets owned. In the "dot.com" era, many of those requirements were set aside as very small companies who had yet to make a profit needed access to the capital markets to raise money to grow. When markets for those firms products and services did not materialize, the small size of the businesses and lack of tangible assets left many of those stocks worthless which is part of the reason the burble burst in 2000-2002.