What does it mean when a company is privatized?

Question

What does it mean when a company is privatized?

Answer 1

it means that the company is no longer listed on a stock exchange.

As a result there are only a few shareholders (a public company has thousands of them) and they can actual take decisions (a public company is managed by a board of directors and it's very hard for the shareholders to overthrown a decision of the board of directors). It may result in riskier business decisions (mostly when a large company goes private with the aid of large investment funds).