Companies

Recommended resources for researching a company [Tips]

Find Articles and Company Information [Help]

Business and Company Resource Center -- Company profiles and histories, industry rankings and statistics, financial overviews, company performance ratings, and articles about companies. Some full e-text.

Business Source Premier -- Business and industry articles. Some full e-text.

Disclosure Corporate Snapshots -- Company directory information.

General Business File ASAP -- Company information, directories, and articles. Some full e-text.

PROMT (Predicasts Overview of Markets and Technology)

Library's Company Reports Index -- Companies in the mining, energy and extractive minerals industries

Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys. This print series (see the Library Catalog) includes for selected industries:

Current and long-term developments
Key industry statistics
Company analyses

Economics and business database search

Broaden Your Search

Library Catalog
Books 24x7

Prospector (regional catalog)

Open WorldCat

Web Sites

Business.com -- Access to public and private company web sites

Hoover's -- Company descriptions, competitors, corporate officers and financial data.

EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering and Analysis Retrieval system) -- Reports submitted by companies required by law to file forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Kompass -- Global company directory and information.

Thomas Register of American Manufacturers -- Company directory.

NAICS CODE (North American Industry Classification System) and SIC CODE (Standard Industrial Classification Number) -- Both available online from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tips

When researching a company, it is important to know whether the company is public (traded on the stock exchange), private, or a subsidiary or division of a larger company.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires all public companies whose stock is traded on an American exchange (except foreign companies and companies with less than $10 million in assets and 500 shareholders) to file numerous reports electronically through the EDGAR database.

Unless they are publicly traded, subsidiaries and divisions of larger companies are not required to release annual reports or financial information. Sometimes this information can be found in the parent company's annual report.

It is important to balance information that companies release about themselves with information from other sources, such as information found in articles and newspaper reports (See the Library's List of Business and Economics Databases).

Private companies can be difficult to research because they are not required to release information to the public -- visit company web pages and also look for articles and newspaper reports (See the Library's List of Business and Economics Databases).