The essence of being a Private Limited Company has been covered in the last section. As already stated, within the Private Limited Company (Ltd) shares can not be sold to the general public, instead they may only be transferred privately, and only with the prior consent of all existing shareholders. Private Limited Companies are often therefore family run businesses, in which some, if not all of the Directors of the Business are also the main shareholders.

Due to the nature of such family run companies ownership and control of the business is retained by a minority of individuals. Legislation requires that there are a minimum of two members / shareholders, and at least one director. Whilst the restriction placed on transferring shares mean that, it is comparatively easy for existing shareholders to retain control of the business. We can draw from the nature of the Private Limited Company, a number of advantages and disadvantages, which are presented in table 3, below.