Proprietary and public companies

Australian companies are either proprietary companies or public companies.

A company may be a proprietary company if it has no more than 50 non-employee shareholders. A proprietary company is subject to less stringent reporting, disclosure and corporate governance requirements than a public company. The reporting and disclosure requirements of proprietary companies differ depending on whether the scale of the activities of the proprietary company result in the proprietary company being classified as a small proprietary company or a large proprietary company.

As a proprietary company need only have one director and one shareholder, it is possible that one person can be in complete control of the company. The Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) has provisions specifically designed to deal with the sole director/shareholder company.

See Proprietary and public companies.