Prison Legal News – by Alex Friedmann
The nation’s two largest for-profit prison companies, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Florida-based GEO Group (GEO), are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Other private prison firms, including Management & Training Corporation (MTC), Community Education Centers (CEC), LaSalle Southwest Corrections and Emerald Correctional Management, are privately-held and thus do not have public stock.
As of July 2015, CCA had issued approximately 117 million shares of stock with a market cap of $4.05 billion, while GEO had issued around 75 million shares with a market cap of $2.76 billion. So who owns the vast majority of stock in these two companies? The answer is not everyday people or individual investors, but rather other corporations – banks, mutual fund management companies and private equity firms – as well as public employee retirement systems. Continue reading “Who Owns Private Prison Stock?”