nike became a publicly traded company in 1980.
when did nike become a publicly traded company?
1980
in 1980, while writing his doctoral thesis on distributed networks, he founded formula software services, providing professional software services to israeli customers. by 1985 he expanded to other areas such as software products and consulting, and in 1985 he founded formula systems (1985) ltd., as a holding corporation for his software products, services and consulting activities. in 1988 he acquired control of a publicly traded company named "eichut computers", which he turned into the communications arm of the developing formula group. he later acquired "idan inc.", a public company traded on nasdaq, and nominated ami harel as its ceo. this company was a pioneer in the developing israeli communications market in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the accelerated regulation of overseas voice and data communication. as the group grew, goldstein formulated an investment strategy of specialization in software products and services for vertical markets. he acquired controlling interests in a number of young companies, such as "applicom", a software house for mini computers, "wiztech", which specialized in billing, and crystal, which specialized in large conversion projects. by 1990 goldstein established the position of formula systems as a leading software group in israel. he founded "foraz", the first israeli venture capital fund, together with "liraz", a publicly traded company headed by arik kilman. goldstein later acquired liraz's share in the fund, and later acquired control of liraz itself.
dan goldstein
however, publicly traded companies also have advantages over their closely held counterparts. publicly traded companies often have more working capital and can delegate debt throughout all shareholders. therefore, shareholders of publicly traded company will each take a much smaller hit to their returns as opposed to those involved with a closely held corporation. publicly traded companies, however, can suffer from that advantage. a closely held corporation can often voluntarily take a hit to profit with little to no repercussions if it is not a sustained loss. a publicly traded company often comes under extreme scrutiny if profit and growth are not evident to stock holders, thus stock holders may sell, further damaging the company. often, that blow is enough to make a small public company fail.
joint-stock company