closely held
adj1
Of a corporation or other business, owned by a small number of people, and not having shares of ownership sold via a stock exchange or other public market.
- Near-synonym: privately held (often hypernymous)
- To reach Africa’s largest oil refinery, you must drive along a new six-lane highway that snakes its way through the swampland of Nigeria’s Atlantic shoreline. […] The refinery operates as a kind of city-state. It has its own jetty and breakwater to ensure the safe delivery of high-tech equipment, as well as a dedicated quarry, dam, water treatment center and power plant. Almost half the size of Manhattan, it sits on 100 million tons of sand—dredged during construction—17 times the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Dangote Petroleum Refinery demonstrates the determination of a single man, Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person. His closely held conglomerate, Dangote Industries Ltd., has long been the continent’s biggest cement producer and has lucrative interests in sugar and fertilizer, as is evident in the corrugated-roof stalls selling his products along the road to the plant.2025 August 20, Peter Martin, Nduka Orjinmo, Paul Burkhardt, “Africa’s Richest Person Wants to Dominate Oil Refining, Too. Will Aliko Dangote help enrich impoverished Nigeria, or just himself?”, in Bloomberg Markets, archived from the original on 20 Aug 2025:
- Related terms
- close to the vest, family business, family office, private credit, private equity, S corporation