Business Resources: Researching a Company

Resources for finding company...

• Directories: profiles, and histories
• Online profiles, financials, and news
• Industry classifications
• Company research FAQs

Information is more readily available for publicly traded parent companies than for privately held companies or subsidiaries. The public or private, parent or subsidiary status of a company will influence your selection of sources for further information. The following sources will help you to quickly determine the status of your company of interest. Not all companies are covered in these sources (especially smaller private companies) but checking these directories is a good first step.

Quarterly reports (10Q), annual reports (10K), and other financial filings are available for most public companies through EDGAR (see below). Usually, a subsidiary's financial information is not available separately from the parent company (see Corporate Affiliations or Million Dollar Database to identify parent company). Annual reports include information about the company's line of business and products, corporate structure, directors and officers, recent achievements, and future goals.

Corporate Affiliations
Ref HG 4057 .A219 - index to public and private companies worldwide. Criteria for inclusion is flexible but, generally, domestic companies with $10,000,000 or more in revenue or "substantial assets/net worth" or a workforce in excess of 300 and non-U.S. companies with revenue in excess of $50,000,000 are included; provides parent company and subsidiary information - very useful in determining company relationships.

Ward's Business Directory of U.S. Private and Public Companies
Ref HG 4057 .A575 - comprehensive multi-volume guide to more than 114,500 companies – public and private, large and small – arranged alphabetically, geographically, and by industry; provides number of employees, financial figures, corporate trees, and more; includes company rankings by sales within specific industries and analysis of the industry activity of leading companies.

Depth of coverage varies among these sources. Minimum information includes company address and telephone number, line of business, and estimated sales. Some sources also provide company history, executive profiles, financial and stock information, and news.

CorpTech Directory of Technology Companies
Ref HG 4057 .A16 - private and public technology companies worldwide.

Directory of American Firms Operating in Foreign Countries
Ref HG 4538 .A1 D5 - entries include list of countries in which company operates.

Directory of Foreign Firms Operating in the United States
Ref HG 4057 .A155

Harris Indiana Industrial Directory
Ref T12 .I63 - public and private industrial companies in Indiana.

Indiana Business Directory
Ref HF 5065 .I6 I53 - public and private companies statewide.

Indiana Manufacturers Directory
Ref T12 .I64 - “Where to buy - Where to sell”; profiles almost 11,500 Indiana manufacturers.

International Directory of Company Histories
Ref HD 2721 .I58

Mergent Bank and Finance Manual
Ref HG 4961 .M65

Mergent Industrial Manual
Ref HG 4961 .M67

Mergent International Manual
Ref HG 4961 .M675

Mergent OTC Industrial Manual
Ref HG 4961 .M7237

Mergent OTC Unlisted Manual
Ref HG 4907 .M68

Mergent Public Utility Manual
Ref HG 4961 .M7245

Mergent Transportation Manual
Ref HG 4971 .M74

Current editions of the Mergent Manuals are available at Mergent Online, but the paper format is very useful for historical information and longitudinal comparison. News Reports for each of the Mergent Manuals titles are also online and updated weekly; these may be accessed from the IUCAT record by searching for the individual News Reports titles, for example: Mergent Transportation News Reports.

Register of American Manufacturers
Ref T 12 .T6 - directory of manufacturing companies, arranged by product.

Standard & Poor's Corporation Records
Ref HG 4501 .S7664 - U.S. public companies.

Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives
Ref HG 4057 .A4 (3 Vols.) - U.S. public companies.

Standard & Poor's Stock Reports
Ref HG 4915 .S72 - covers major national and regional U.S. stock exchanges.

The above Standard & Poor's titles (and more) are available online at NetAdvantage.

Standard Directory of Advertisers
Ref HF 5805 .S7 - worldwide listing of advertising agencies.

Thomson Bank Directory
Ref HG 2441 .R3 - comprehensive directory of bank offices worldwide.

ABI/INFORM Suite includes three distinct databases:

• ABI/INFORM Dateline - Local and regional coverage of company, industry and business news; excellent source of information about private and small public companies not typically found in the national business press.
• ABI/INFORM Global - Search 1000 premier worldwide business periodicals for information on business topics: advertising, marketing, economics, human resources, finance, taxation, management; also company and industry information.
• ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry - Contains more than 700 trade publications covering every major industry, including finance, insurance, transportation, construction, and health.

Amadeus - detailed information on 200,000 public and private companies in 34 European countries: national identification number, address, telephone, website, legal form, year of incorporation, officers, number of employees, industry codes, and more.

Annual Report Gallery
Free access to annual reports, in their actual format, in one location; provided directly from participating companies.

Business & Company Resource Center - a fully integrated resource bringing together company profiles, brand information, rankings, investment reports, company histories, chronologies and periodicals; search this database to find detailed company and industry news and information.

Business Source Premier - full text for more than 2,950 scholarly business journals, including full text for nearly 900 peer-reviewed business publications dating as far back as 1922; coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business.

Corporate ResourceNet - full text articles from nearly 1,300 magazines and journals ranging from general publications to trade publications and top management journals; detailed profiles of the world’s 10,000 largest companies.

EDGAR Database of Corporate Information
Contains SEC filings submitted electronically; includes 10Ks, 10Qs, proxy statements, and many other filings.

Factiva - global business content, including Reuters Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, full-text; content covers nearly 8,000 sources.  Limited to 4 users at a time.

Hoover's Company Records - excellent company 'snapshots' including a brief company history, list of key competitors, executives, and contact information; larger companies have more extensive entries.

Investext Plus - financial research database contains domestic and foreign company and industry investment reports from more than 500 analysts.  Limited to 5 users at a time.

LexisNexis Academic Universe (Restricted to authorized IUPUI users within the US) - "Business" segment includes public and private company directories; business, industry, and market news.

MarketLine (formerly Datamonitor) - Reports draw on extensive primary and secondary research. Company Profiles include company overviews, business descriptions, company history, executive listings, product listings, locations, news and commentary. Industry Profiles provide key industrial and consumer sectors across the world's leading economies. Country Profiles give you quick access to country data points, trends and analysis.

Mergent Online - extensive company profiles for domestic and foreign companies with archives; includes detailed company histories and financial information with links to SEC filings; also country profiles.

Million Dollar Database - U.S. private and public company profiles.  Limited to 1 user at a time.

NetAdvantage (Standard and Poor’s) – see the “Companies” section for profiles in the Standard and Poor’s (S & P) Register of Public and Private Companies and S & P Corporation Records; also available are the S & P Register of Executives, S & P Stock Reports, and S & P Bond Reports.

Newsletters ASAP - business, industry and technology newsletters issued by various news services and industry watchers.

Plunkett Research Online - industry overview and outlook; statistics; market research and trends; industry-related associations, organizations, and government agencies; profiles of major companies doing business in each industry.

RDS Business Reference Suite (BizSuite) - collection of three complementary business information databases - Business & Industry, Business & Management Practices, and TableBase; search one database or combine them; the BizSuite interface allows the researcher to search all three databases and is useful for broad profiling information about companies or industries; searching Business & Industry and TableBase together produces the textual content from Business & Industry supported by the tabular content of TableBase.  Limited to 4 users at a time.

To find information about a company's competitors it is useful to know the company's industry classification code so that you can identify companies within the same industry. The current standard is the North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) code, but many company and industry directories continue to use the older Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code, it is a good idea to be familiar with both. These codes describe a company's line of business using a 4-digit (SIC) or 6-digit (NAICS) number.

North American Industry Classification Systems, 1997 (NAICS)
Ref Desk HF 1041.5 .N674 1997 - lists and defines the NAICS codes. Searchable online NAICS: http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html

Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Manual
Ref Desk PREX 2.6/2:IN 27/987 (Gov. Doc.) - lists and defines SIC Codes. Searchable online SIC Manual: http://www.osha.gov/oshstats/sicser.html