Private World (Forbes.com) Forbes.com - Even though all of these giant private companies are headquartered outside the U.S., several of them are quite familiar to the American public. Sweden's Ikea has 23 furniture stores in the U.S. and 4 more under construction. Bertelsmann, the German publishing outfit, owns Random House and Family Circle magazine. Some of these private companies have been in family hands for a long while--just shy of 400 years in the case of Takenaka, the Japanese construction outfit. ...