Company Information -
Library Resources
1. Is the company public, private or a subsidiary?
2. Investigate the industry & its competitors.
3. Notice changes in the company's leadership.
4. Learn about the company's history & mission.
5. Evaluate your sources & cite correctly.
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1. Determine
if your company is publicly held, private or a subsidiary.
Publicly owned Companies sell shares
of stock in the company that are traded on various exchanges. They
are required to report financial information the the Securities
and Exchange Commission (The SEC.)
Privately held companies are not
required to divulge any information and you are limited to articles
about them in newspapers and magazines.
Financial information for subsidiary
companies is usually not available, but is merged into the financial
information of the parent company.
LexisNexis
Academic Search for a company's
name under the red & white "Business" tab.
Hoovers.com or finance.yahoo.com/
allow a free search for company names, and results will give the
company's ticker symbol to indicate the publicly owned business.
You can often determine if the company is is part of a joint venture
or a subsidiary.
A. If your company is publicly
held, financial information will be available in:
Factiva
- Under the "Companies/Markets" green tab choose
the white Company tab to search for the company name or ticker symbol.
Mergent
Online -
includes 11,000 public companies and their SEC filings,
financials for 15 years, and Annual Reports.
Annual Reports in Otterbein's
Library
| Mergent
Online - many U.S.
companies annual reports for the past 7 years. |
Online |
|
| Company File
- paper copies of Annual Reports, some are Ohio companies. |
Company File |
2nd floor |
| Fortune 500 Annual
Reports 1987-2001 |
Microfiche |
2nd floor |
| LexisNexis
Academic includes Disclosure Reports and links
to SEC 10K reports. |
Online |
|
Thomson
One Banker
SEC 10K filings and some current ARS in pdf format and more. |
Online |
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B. If your company
is public, private or a subsidiary, articles from magazines, journals
and newspapers will be found in:
Business
Source Complete - Detailed company profiles from Datamonitor
Plc. are available for larger companies and often include a SWOT
analysis.
LexisNexis
Academic- full-text articles
from national, regional and world newspapers and magazines.
Factiva -
has the latest news reported in newswires, newspapers from every
corner of the globe and general publications like The Economist,
Forbes, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek.
America's
Newspapers - selected full text articles from regional newspapers.
Newspaper
Source - includes 30 national newspapers and selected full
text from 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers.
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2. Investigate the industry and
the company's competitors.
Reference Books
- Almanac of Business and
Industrial Financial Ratios
(Leo Troy) Ref HF5791 .R25 T68...
- Automotive News Market Data
Book Ref HD9710 .U5
A82...
- Business Rankings Annual
HG 4050 .B88...
- Digital America: US Consumer Electronics Industry Today
Ref HD9971.E543 U54...
- Encyclopedia of American Industries Ref HC102.E53
2005 v. 1-2
- Market Share Reporter
Ref HF5410 .M35...
- Manufacturing & Distribution
U.S.A.: Industry Analyses, Statistics and Leading Companies.
Ref HD9721 .M364...
- Standard & Poor's
Industry Surveys
Ref HC106.6 .S74...
- Statistical Abstracts of
the United States Ref HA202 .S83...
Databases
Business
Source Complete - Notice the Industry Profiles and Market
Research Reports.
LexisNexis
Academic
- Click on "Business" under the Academic
Search Forms and then News,
and finally
"Industry & Market" to discover recent news on 25
broad industries.
- Key competitors can be found on the Snapshot page and more
can be found by following the link to Hoover's Company Report.
Factiva
- You can retrieve summary reports by searching for your industry
and sc=IBIS.
- In the search box click the Industry
link next to the "Select Factiva Intelligent Indexing"
and pick one of the 30 broad industries. Then do a search for
your company and the articles retrieved will be about both your
company and it's industry.
Mergent
Online -
Allows you to retrieve a list of companies within the same industry
by searching an SIC or NAICS code in the Advanced Search. Then financial
data can be compared on publicly owned companies.
WWW - some links to Government
agencies and trade associations often collect statistics and post
information about trends on their websites.
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3. Look for changes
in the company's leadership.
Take time to search for books, periodical articles
and Internet information about the leaders of the company and
notice any changes in the management.
Reference Books
International Directory of Business Biographies
Ref HC29 .I57 2005 v. 1-4.
Factiva
- Search the Free-text search box for information on executives'
names. You can also search just The Wall Street Journal by
searching for sc=j AND Les* Wexner.
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4. Learn about
the company's history & mission.
Reference Sources
for Company History
Search for books in the OPAL
and OhioLINK catalogs
Search by Subject for the
Company name, or by the founder's name,
e.g General Motors or Gates, Bill
Find Mission Statements
The Mission Statement Book.
Ref HD 30 .285 .A27 1999
Mission Statements: A Guide
to the Corporate and Nonprofit Sectors
HD 30.28 .G697 1994
Mission statements are occasionally
posted on company Web pages or may be mentioned in periodical
articles. A company such as Honda will have more than one mission
statement. Their car and motorcycle manufacturing units and even
their dealerships will have different missions.
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