Company Guides: International Company Information

Business and Economics Information Services

Contents:

Company overviews & profiles
Articles (news, journals)
Directories
Rankings
Annual reports & filings
Company announcements
Financials
IPOs
Investment reports
Corporate governance

Advertising

Asia. [Photograph]. Retrieved from Encyclopaedia Britannica Image Quest.

Mergers & acquisitions
Joint ventures & strategic alliances
Stock exchanges & data
Ownership
Company registration
Taxation
Executives, compensation, biographies
Auditors
Bankruptcy

Company overviews & profiles

Business Source Premier	Use Company Profiles to search on public and private companies. The Datamonitor reports provide a company overview, key facts, business description, history, major products and services, SWOT analysis, top competitors, locations and subsidiaries, and company news.
Business Monitor International	Company intelligence by country, often emerging countries, and by industry sector. Includes FDI alerts, privatization alerts, company profiles including competitors, directory-type information, subsidiary/parent information and latest news.
Factiva	Useful source of company profiles and news, plus use Companies/Market search for public company information, including a financial snapshot, profile, brief history, list of competitors, and analysts reports.
Hoover's Company Records	Provides current information for over 40,000 public and private companies, over 600 industries, and 225,000 key executives. Information includes : Company overview and history; Officers and board members; Competitors; Products and Operations; Auditors; Rankings; Related industry information; and Historical financials. Company Records are linked from other ProQuest databases.
MarketLine Advantage	A database providing access to company, industry, financial and country profiles and data. Company and industry profiles include SWOT analyses and Porter's Five Forces scorecards. Country profiles include information on political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental landscapes (PESTLE). This database was previously known as Datamonitor360 Explorer.
Mergent Online	Detailed information for international listed companies, including history, joint ventures, subsidiaries, long term debt, executives, and news.
Osiris	Contact information, legal and account information, main activity and industry, key financial and employees, directors & managers, auditor details, ownership information.
International directory of company histories	A print directory of individual company histories. Information includes key dates, subsidiaries, competitors, company perspectives i.e. mission, goals and ideals, plus a list of further readings. The companies include public, private or nonprofit, with a minimum of US$25 million in annual sales. A cumulative index is at the back of the latest volume.
Passport GMID	Results can include a ranked listing of companies based on market share, sales and net profit. Information for a company profile includes key events, corporate summary, financials, employees, market share, subsidiaries, brands, and websites.
FT.com Company Research	Free website providing detailed information on public companies worldwide. Provides stock performance, recent news articles, analysis and reports, snapshot profiles, financials, top executives, and more.
RDS Business Suite	The RDS Business Suite search interface is useful when searching for broad profiling information about companies or industries.
Other sources	Often major studies of a particular company are published as a book, or as chapters within a book. Search the name of the company in the Library catalogue. See also Sources to help with Industry Analysis A flowchart detailing Finding International Company Information. An article from FreePint examining sources of information on private companies in the USA, Western Europe, UK and Ireland.

Articles

ABI/Inform	Enter the company name, limit to Companies/Org field.
Business Source Premier	Offers a mixture of newspaper and journal articles, company profiles and industry reports.
Emerald Management Xtra	Peer reviewed journal articles aimed at both academic researchers and practitioners.
Factiva	News articles on companies. Factiva has a feature that allows you to trace the volume of stock being traded over the past quarter for an individual company. You can look at volume for a particular day, and then track the news on that given day, giving you a glimpse of the kinds of activities and events that are driving interest in the company. See this short video How to track a company's interest in the news and stock market with Factiva Apr 16th 2012, from theBusiness librarian at Ohio University).
Wall Street Journal	Useful for finding announcement dates. The Wall Street Journal from 1986 onwards is also available in ABI Inform.

Directories

A selection of company directories in print format are shelved in the Business Reference collection, Level 1, General Library.

Kompass

An international business directory. It contains information on a company's executives, brief financials, branches, localities, a list of products and services, and trade and brand names.

Rankings

Australian Business Review Weekly	Includes ranked lists for Australian companies. Print only.
Forbes	A well known annual ranking of companies by various categories.
Fortune	See The Fortune 500 and The Global 500. Earlier lists are available in the hardcopy version of the journal Fortune. The Fortune 500 is published in the annual April Issue 7 ; the Global 500 is published in the annual July Issue 2 of this magazine.
Hoover's	Try Hoover's Directories > Industry Overviews
IndustryWeek	Has a variety of lists including top 1000, top US 500. See Industry week to access earlier lists via databases.
TableBase	Finds articles which include statistical data reports, e.g. data on company and brand rankings, industry and product forecasts, market share, number of users or outlets, production and consumption, trends, usage and capacity.
Corporate responsibility, citizenship & green business resources	A listing of sources for ranking companies by their corporate responsibility. Mostly freely available resources, listed by Chuck Boeninger from Ohio University Libraries.

Annual reports & filings

Note many companies have their latest annual reports on their websites.

Mergent Online	Annual reports for US and international companies. Includes EDGAR filings.
Northcote Annual Reports	Links to the annual reports of FTSE companies. Can search by sector.
SCoRe	A catalogue of current and historical printed company reports held in UK libraries. The catalogue does not provide links to digitised documents but is a quick way of identifying libraries that hold print copy reports.

Company announcements

Compustat (restricted access)	Provides earnings announcements. The code is RDQE (Report of Quarterly Earnings). US companies.
Mergent Online	Access to SEC and SEDAR (Canada) filings. Either use the 'Government Filings' tab or access via individual company.

Financials

Factiva	Stock prices for listed companies worldwide. Use the companies/markets button at top of the screen, and click Quotes for prices, or Company for financial reports.
Mergent online	Key financials, balance sheets back at least 5 years, income statements, cash flow and equity pricing.
Osiris	Detailed financial information on 70,000 listed, and major unlisted/delisted, companies around the world
Datastream (restricted access)	Company accounts information plus time series equity data. See FAQs for Datastream.
SDC Platinum (restricted access)	Global new issues, mergers and acquisitions.
WRDS (restricted access)	Compustat: Annual and quarterly income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, and supplemental data items on most publicly held US companies. CRSP: Security price, return, and volume data for the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq stock markets I/B/E/S: Forecasts from security analysts, including earnings per share, revenue, cash flow, long-term growth projections and stock recommendations.
SEC Info	Securities information from the SEC EDGAR.
Other sources	Financial databases : a library guide to what is available and how to use the financial databases. Numeraire DCF Valuator for Canada and the USA

IPOs

SDC Platinum (restricted access)	Global New Issues has IPOs. 1970 onwards.
IPO express	From EDGAR Online. US companies.
IPOs	From 123Jump. US companies.
IPO Central	From Hoovers Online. US companies.
ASX	Australian Stock Exchange, upcoming floats.

Investment reports

WRDS (restricted access).	IBES contains brokers' and analysts' forecast data.
World investment report	Looks at FDI. It includes information by industry sector and by company name.

Mergers & acquisitions

Mergers and Acquisitions Review	Produced by Thomson Reuters, a worldwide summary of the last year's M&A activity.
SDC Platinum (restricted access)	Has a Mergers & Acquisitions component.
Mergers & Acquisitions Report	Can be searched on Business Source Premier. Covers US and foreign companies. January 1999 onwards.
Mergers & Acquisitions: The Dealermaker's Journal	Can be searched on Business Source Premier. Each issue has a deal flow section listing key M&A deals announced the previous month. International in coverage. Acquirer, target, announcement date, target industry, price ($ mill).
M&A Monthly Review	From Corpfin Ltd. Focus is on the UK.
Takeovers Panel	Decisions by the Takeovers Panel (Australia).
Australian Competition Tribunal	Full text of Australian Competition Tribunal decisions.
Asia-Pacific M&A Bulletin	From PricewaterhouseCoopers. See also M&A industry insights by industry sector.
SEC Info	Securities information from the SEC EDGAR. Merger & Acquisition Deals and Tender Offers filed up to one year previous.
See also Takeovers and Securities Regulators A list of international regulators, compiled by the Takeovers Panel, Australia.

Joint ventures & strategic alliances

SDC Platinum (restricted access)	Has a joint ventures and strategic alliances option in the Mergers & Acquisitions component. The data is from 1988 onwards.
Mergent online	Includes joint venture and alliance information for named companies (year, with whom). See "News" tab.

Stock exchanges & data

Datastream (restricted access)	Datastream provides historical financial information and worldwide coverage. Key data sets include equities and company financials, stock market indices, unit and investment trusts, warrants, and bonds. Available frequencies include daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual. See FAQs for Datastream.
WRDS (restricted access)	Includes access to CRSP(NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq stock markets), I/B/E/S, and the Dow Jones Industrial Averages.
Factiva	Stock prices for companies worldwide. Use Companies / Markets tab.

Stock Markets of the World	Online access to international markets.
World Federation of Exchanges	Includes detailed market statistics.
Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes	Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.

Ownership

It can be difficult to find ownership information. Using an internet search engine may find various sources that may list companies by "foreign affiliation", "foreign ownership" and privatised companies.

SEC Info	Securities information from the SEC EDGAR. Institutional ownership reports filed up to one year previous.
Who owns whom. Australasia, Asia, Middle East & Africa.	General Library, Business Reference collection, Level M. 338.8 W62. 2010/2011 edition available.
World Investment Directory	Information by industry sector and by company name. There are print volumes at S1/UN INVd [Statistics Collection, Level M, General Library]. The full profile reports give background information to the collection of data plus named TNC companies by industry sector and country of head office.
Mergent Online	Includes a list of subsidiaries for each company.
Osiris	Ownership data for public companies. Includes subsidiary information and shareholder data.
Privatisation database	From the World Bank and IFC. Information on privatisation transactions in developing countries, from 2000 - 2008.
SDC Platinum (restricted access)	There is a privatisation flag in the Mergers & Acquisitions component.

Company registration

Official Company Registers

A listing of company registers by region and country.

Taxation

KPMG's Corporate and Indirect Tax Survey 2010	An annual publication from KPMG detailing current corporate tax rates, plus previous 5 years of rates.
OECD Tax Database	'Provides comparative information on a range of tax statistics'.
Paying taxes 2011: the global picture	Produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers, this guide compares tax systems from 183 economies, and explores the impact upon business.

Executives, compensation, biographies

Compustat, WRDS (restricted access)	Compustat > North America > Compustat Quarterly Updates > Execucomp (Executive Compensation). For US companies.
BoardRoom, Connect4	A directory of directors and senior executives of Australian listed companies. Includes remuneration figures for directors and senior employees.
Company Director Check	Free access to information on current and past directors of UK companies.
Factiva	For general information and news about company executives.
Mergent Online	US and some Canadian executive information, including biographies, compensation, committees, executive insider trading details.
Osiris	Details of current directors and managers for international public companies.
Riskmetrics, WRDS (restricted access)	Directors and corporate governance data for USA S&P 1500 companies.
China Vitae	Biographies of Chinese business leaders.

Auditors

Compustat, WRDS (restricted access)	US companies.
Audit Analytics, WRDS (restricted access)	Audit information for US public companies and accounting firms.
Mergent Online	Extract auditing information, year by year, as one item from an annual report.
Osiris	Auditor details for public listed companies.

Bankruptcy

Datastream (restricted access)	See Economics series. Free text search using keyword bankruptcies or insolvencies. See FAQs for Datastream.
Hines, Todd M. (2006). Sources for researching business bankruptcies. Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship. 11(3), 3-17.