Batman, inc is still in play, though it sits uncomfortably with the GCPD being after him again.
(Also, very little of the Gotham corner of the DCU has been altered, and about half of that is explained in-universe.)
Yes, he has - he very occasionally mentions that what he’s using is regular Wayne Industries product. And, frankly, what he uses as Batman is not exactly gamechanging, especially not his weaponry.
I wonder if maybe we’re not being precise enough with the language here: a privately held company does not necessarily mean a company owned by just one person (or a couple of people). A privately held company does not have to make certain types of public financial disclosures that are mandatory for publicly traded companies. It can have a few dozen or even a few hundred shareholders, which is usually going to be less than a publicly traded company. That doesn’t mean the Chairman/CEO can do whatever he wants with company money and products without telling anyone. That could be embezzlement and it sounds like a great way to get sued at the very least. People who invest their money in your company are going to want to know what you are doing. However if every share of the company is secretly owned by Bruce Wayne, that’s probably is not a big deal, and we can assume he’s smart enough to bullshit the guys who sit on the board and represent the shell companies that belong to him anyway. Batman also knows much more about the corporate world that Superman or most of his colleagues, and I doubt most of them would care if he is technically embezzling.
That’s also touched on in Batman Begins, where Fox (who runs the R&D department, after all) is the first to figure it out: “Look, Bruce, if you don’t want to tell me what you’re doing, I won’t have to lie when asked. But I’m not an idiot.”
And I think the idea in that movie was that the tech Batman was using was all things that the company had legitimately developed with the hope of selling them to the military or others, before discovering that there just wasn’t a market for them. That sort of thing happens with real companies all the time. Really, the only R&D Batman himself applied to most of the tech was painting it black and cutting it into a bat shape.
As usual, Cracked.com has your back. Warning: Video.
“Clark? Bruce. Something’s come up; I need you to be a buddy, get me some sunken pirate treasure ASAP. Thanks, man. I owe you one.”