The only real differences between a public and a private company are (a) that for a public company the shares are publicly traded on an exchange, so are more subject to market fluctuations and influences, whereas for a private company they are not, (b) the statutory company reporting requirements are different (more onerous) for a public company than they are for a private company, and (c) its almost impossible to value a private company properly without privileged access to inside information, whereas for a public company such a valuation is much easier to achieve (e.g. via the share price).
Whether a company is public or private, if it is a limited liability company which is limited by shares (as opposed to limited by guarantee) then the process of investing by buying shares and the future payment of dividends against those shares is the same, so it makes no difference. The risk to your investment could be greater in a publicly traded company for the reasons stated above, but so could the rewards also. So, although my analogy of taking a risk by placing a bet (investment) on a colour of a roulette wheel, in the hope of a big win (a healthy dividend payment, or perhaps a healthy profit if you later sell your shares for more than you bought them) isn’t perfect, its accurate enough.
As far as I am aware Jolla Oy only revealed that Rostelcom was a minor shareholder, nothing more. However, as you say, Jolla Oy was a private company - so unless that private company chooses to tell you who the shareholders are, what they paid for those shares, how many they bought, etc, then it is none of your business, or mine. A member of the public (you, me, or anyone else on this forum) has no automatic right to know such details.
How do you know that he was not given a chance to defend his position? Do you have inside information that attests to your claim? If he was a shareholder and board director of Jolla Oy he would have had the same rights in law as any other shareholder or director of the company. If you say he lost his seat on the board then how do you know it wasn’t for one or more of the legitimate reasons stated in my last post here:
You’re implying that something underhand, or even possibly illegal, was done to get rid of this person, and you’re doing it in a public forum. If I may say so, that is a little unwise unless you have evidence to back up such a claim.
If Rostelcom was a shareholder in Jolla Oy, a limited liability company, then as a shareholder it had no liability for any of Jolla Oy’s debts as explained in my post here:
If you are asking how Rostelcom could pay off Jolla Oy’s debts, then the obvious question would be ‘Why would they want to?’ Why would you put more money in a company that’s just about to go bankrupt? That’s a bit like betting on Red at the roulette wheel when you know in advance that the ball is going to land on black. Remember, by this time they already had the rights to Sailfish and turned it into Auorora (which from the posts on this forum, seems to be far more developed than Sailfish now) and Jolla Oy is a minnow compared to the size of Rostelcom in terms of development resources - so what would they gain by pumping more money into a failing company?.
But, if they really did, one way would be for Rostelcom to buy more shares through a rights issue by Jolla Oy; another would be to enter into a contracted funding agreement with Jolla Oy. However, seeing as Jolla Oy, and most likely its creditors as well, wanted to divest themselves of part ownership by a company with close connections to the Russian state (because this relationship was preventing inward investment in Jolla Oy from other funding sources), the other majority shareholders and creditors would be unlikely to agree to such approaches. Its also possible that other considerations like sanctions, Finnish company law, etc would have prevented such actions even if Jolla Oy had wanted to pursue them.
I have no idea of the mechanics of moving funds across state borders when sanctions are in place against one of the states. Its not relevant anyway for the reasons stated above.
If you say so. As with almost all lawyers, I often get this type of reaction when I’m giving a client either news they don’t want to hear or a legal opinion which does not fit in with their pre-conceived ideas, so I am not offended in the least - only curious. Curious because it was you who asked me the questions. If you know more about the subject than I do, then why did you ask me?