The major difference between public and private companies, is that public companies have shares that can be publicly traded on the stock market. A private company might become a public company by conducting an initial public offering, which is when shares of the company are offered to the public. Becoming a public company entails a number of changes to the firm which includes changes to management, business strategy, valuation methods and legal obligations. Public companies tend to be run by a board of directors because once a company goes public the main goal is to increase shareholder value. Private companies are less focused on increasing the value of the company because only a limited number of shareholders exist. For private companies instead of having a board of directors, the business decisions are undertaken by either the business owners or investors. Since managers are less focused on increasing the value of the company in the short term (like public companies), it allows them to have an increased flexibility in the short and long term business decisions. An example of a public medical device company would be Becton Dickinson (BD) which trades on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) under “BDX”. An example of a private medical device company would be Biomet.