Is Volvo a public company?
"There are two different companies named ""Volvo."" The publicly-traded company with ticker symbol VOLV-B is called Volvo Group, or AB Volvo.  They primarily build trucks, buses, and construction equipment. The company that makes the Volvo branded cars is called Volvo Cars.  It is a privately-held company currently owned by the Chinese Geely Holding Group. It was all one company until 1999, when AB Volvo sold off its car brand to Ford.  Because of the history, the two companies share the same logo."
That is not completely true. Many of these companies use public easements or have had public funds invested in them.  And the infrastructure would continue to be privately owned, there would just be some regulations placed on how they can operate it. I'd say there's a lot of oversight in the public companies, like maintaining transparency to the public by having public consultations and sending out lots of communication. There's also the way budgets are managed in public companies that are very different from a private company, so there's way more oversight into where the money goes. The reason public projects take so long generally falls under these considerations.  Private companies (at least where I'm from) also have to follow some pretty strict rules that there is a lot of pushback on, but considering that a lot of the oversight boils down to things like don't increase traffic by x amount without creating a detour route, don't increase stormwater flows to a river that would flood out people downstream, don't build houses so close together that a fire can jump from one to the next, etc, but I agree with having the strict regulation because it means that in fifty years we won't have the same massive problems that there have been before.  Also it's a tough sell to get some things done by private investment, like a country road, so it's a lot easier to have the government do it. That's why there's usually a division between capital works and development, where capital works will build the roads and sewers in existing areas while development will be subdivisions and industrial complexes where the developer has to put in all of the infrastructure as part of their development that they're making sales or rentals to turn a profit on. So there is a balance, but it's capital works that gets the most media attention for being horrible and in need of repair. For comparison, US Auto sales figures for 2013:  Car Model | 2013 Sales  ---------|---------- Honda Accord (rank = #1) | 360,089 Toyota Camry (rank = #2) | 342,007  All GM Cars\*\* | 644,163 All Mercedes Benz cars | 106,047 All Volvo cars \*\* | 19,145 All Subaru cars\*\* | 149,282 All Mazda cars | 97,258 Forf F150 | 763,402  ^\*\* Excluding trucks and light trucks (SUVs)   The top selling vehicles in the USA for 2014 are the Ford F150 and the Chevy Silverado, both pickups, at 429,065 and 282,776 units, year to date.     sources:    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/honda-says-accord-beat-camry-as-top-u-s-car-in-individual-sales.html   http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html   http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/03/259395010/ford-tops-resurgent-u-s-car-industry-2013-sales-results-show You have a lot of different questions in your post - I am only responding to the request for how to value the ESPP. When valuing an ESPP, don't think about what you might sell the shares for in the future, think about what the market would charge you for that option today. In general, an option is worth much less than the underlying share itself. For the simplest example, assume you work at a public company, and your exercise price for your options is $.30, and you can only exercise those options until the end of today, and the cost of the shares on the public stock exchange is also $.30. You have the same 'strike price' as everyone else in the market, making your option worth nothing. In truth, holding that right to a specific strike price into the future does give you value, because it means you can realize the upside in share price gains, without risking any money on share losses. So, how do you value the options? If it's a public company with an active options market, you can easily compare your $.30 strike price with the value of call options in the market that have a $.30 strike price. That becomes the value to you of the option (caveat: it is unlikely you can find an exact match for the terms of your vesting period, but you should be able to find a good starting point). If it's a public company without an active options market, you will have to do a bit of estimation. If a current share is worth $.25 (so, close to your strike price), then your option is worth a little bit, but not much. Compare other shares in your industry / company size to get examples of the relative value between an option and a share. If the current share price is worth $.35, then your option is worth about $.05 [the $.05 profit you could get by immediately exercising and selling, plus a bit more for an option on a share that you can't buy in the open market]. If it's a private company, then you need to be very clear on how shares are to be valued, and what methods you have available to sell back to the company / other individuals. You can then consider as per above, how to value the option for a share, vs the share itself. Without a clear way to sell your shares of a private company [ideally through a sale directly back to the company that you are able to force them to agree on; ie: the company will buyback shares at 5x Net income for the previous year, or something like that], then the value of a small number of shares is very nebulous. There is an extremely limited market for shares of private companies, if you don't own enough to exert control. In your case, because the valuation appears to be $2/share [be sure that these are the same share classes you have the option to buy], your option would be worth a little more than $1.70, if you didn't have to wait 4 years to exercise it. This would be total compensation of about $10k, if you were able to exercise today. Many people don't end up working for an early job in their career for 4 years, so you need to consider whether how much that will reduce the value of the ESPP for you personally. Compared with salary of 90k, 10k worth of stock in 4 years may not be a heavy motivating compensation consideration. Note also that because the company is not public, the valuation of $2/share should be taken with a grain of salt. "VIV.PA - is Vivendi listed on a stock exchange in Paris VIVEF - is Vivendi listed on the OTC Other Exchange. VIVHY - is Listed on the OTC:Pink Sheets.  A company can be listed on multiple exchanges, they are known as a dual-listed company. It's a corporate structure in which two corporations function as a single operating business through a legal equalization agreement, but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings. Pretty much all DLCs are cross-border, and have tax advantages for the corporations and their stockholders. When a DLC is created, in essence two companies are created and have two separate bodies of shareholders, but they agree to share all the risks and rewards of the ownership of all their operating businesses in a fixed proportion, laid out in a contract called an ""equalization agreement"". The shares of a DLC parents have claim to the exact same underlying cash flows. So in theory the stock prices of these companies should move exactly the same. However in practice there can be differences between these prices. More info on OTC exchanges can be found here - keep in mind this info is from the company that runs these listings. Over the counter stocks are held to a FAR lesser regulation standard. I would recommend doing further interdependent research before pursuing any action." Yes, that is correct. There is no limit.  An initial public offering of common stock by a company means that these shares remain outstanding for as long as the company wishes. The exceptions are through corporate actions, most commonly either Geely owns the Volvo car corporation, which used to belong to the Volvo company. The Volvo car corporation was a relatively small part of the greater Volvo group, which Geely has absolutely no control over whatsoever. I know it's easy to look at Volvo and imagine a car, but it was really the least profitable part of the company for a long time. Volvo is involved in trucks, aircraft, boats, construction, owns a chunk of Renault and outright owns Mack trucks. It's a big company with some 90 000+ employees. Lets pretend that TELSA decided to split its stock 10 shares for 1. Now the stock is $35 dollars- would that make you happy?  You dont have any idea how companies are valued.   Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class A NYSE: BRK.A - Oct 31, 12:58 PM EDT 280,210.00 USD