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Strategic Management and Leadership: BALA 303

Companies - Recommended Databases

  • Mergent Online
    • A suite of extensive financial information on US and international public companies.
    • Mergent Online provides digital images of annual reports to shareholders, complete text of SEC filings, equity research reports, global historical stock prices, corporate and municipal bond data, and industry reports.
    • Also includes Dun & Bradstreet Private Company Data.
  • EDGAR
    • Open access website of the Securities & Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) system.
    • Search for a company's SEC filings. Includes all financial, new issues, mergers, joint venture, insider trading etc.
    • Popular Types:
      • 8-K: Released any time a company has a 'significant event'. Includes things like hiring a new director, M&A announcement, earnings releases, legal disputes etc.
      • 10-K: Annual report filed with the SEC. This contains financial data executive compensation, business activities etc. The 10-K contains all information - good and bad - with no 'spin' on it.
      • 10-Q: Quarterly financial reports.
      • DEF 14A: Proxy filing. Submitted prior to annual meeting of shareholders, it contains information such as director backgrounds, committee structures, corporate governance and will have executive compensation information if left out of the 10-K.
  • MergentOnline
    • Includes Dun & Bradstreet Private Company Data
    • Click the box on the first search page to limit a search to private companies.
  • Business Source Complete
    • Use to find articles and company profiles. Search by company name.
    • The "Company Information" component provides detailed company information for more than 1.1 million of the world’s largest public and private companies. Data includes financials, subsidiaries, products, employees, industry information and more.
  • Mergent Online
    • To find international companies, deselect the domestic check boxes before running your search. Depending on the disclosure regulations for each country, the amount of data may be exactly like the US company data you can find.
  • Business Insights: Global
    • Find case studies, in-depth statistical data for international industries/companies
    • Use to compare global economies, countries and industries.
    • Search by company name to find articles and company profiles.
  • AnnualReports.com
    • Provides free access shareholder reports for many publicly traded corporations

Standard & Poor's industry surveys. [QC Library currently does not own this journal]
Standard and Poor's Corporation.
1973 - 2012

  • Current issues are now produced online only by CFRA Research
  • Within the survey there are often rankings/figures but each has tables in the rear of the report that give much financial information by company by financial statement.
  • Historical issues back to 1970s are limited to the print copies.

Company Info

SIC/NAICS Codes are numerical classification systems to help identify and organize like companies within the same industry.

NAICS Search The North American Industry Classification system (NAICS) is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting and analyzing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy.

  • NAICS was adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system to allow for a high level of comparability in busines statistics among the North American countries.
  • "Concordances" -- A detailed conversion (concordance) between the SIC and 2002 NAICS is available in Excel format. There are no plans to develop a concordance between the SIC and 2007 NAICS.

SIC Manual SIC codes and their descriptions at the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) website.

         Search for company by name or stock ticker to get to the "Company Dossier" feature.

It can be helpful to consider what type of company you are seeking information on:

Public Companies

  • Trade stocks or securities on an exchange and
  • Are typically required to disclose information about their operations and performance, this means a lot of information is available in the databases and on company websites.

Private Companies

  • Not always required by law to disclose information for public inspection, therefore they can be harder to research.
  • Resources to research private companies include some of our databases, news sources and company websites.

Subsidiary

  • A subsidiary company is one that is owned by another company.
  • Financial information on a subsidiary is sometimes not available and it is necessary to read the reports of the parent company.

Nonprofit organizations

  • A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the organization's income is distributed to its members, directors, or officers.
  • Can fall into a number of categories including associations and not-for-profit unlisted public companies.

Government entities

  • A governmental entity is that which is closely affiliated, generally by government ownership or control, with State and local governments.