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Finding Company Information

Example Questions That Can Be Answered Using This FAQ

• How much money did Yahoo make last year?
• Who's the president of Xerox?

Resources Online:

• Hoover's Online, a company that also publishes print directories of company information, is the best source we have found for getting company information online. Hoover's Online provides many free profiles that include history, current status, products and services, staff information, and financials. To access all of the available profiles, you must sign up for a subscription, for which there is a fee.
• Forbes, Inc. is a well respected resource for information about businesses.  The site offers up-to-date information regarding business trends, Wall Street, and news in the U.S. and around the world.  Searching is free; registration is also free and is not necessary.
• Company researchers may also want to consult the Yahoo! Finance Company and Fund Index which offers "company profiles from Market Guide, who provides users with information on over 9,000 public companies, including contact information, business summaries, officer and employee information, sector and industry classifications, business and earnings announcement summaries, and financial statistics and ratios. Yahoo adds stock charts based on historical data from Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI), and links to other resources."
• Wall Street Research Net's Company Research site offers easy access to a range of information (some, but not all, requiring a fee to access) about U.S. and Canadian companies. A "Key Links" section offers SEC filings, statistics, earnings estimates, and much more. A "News Headlines" section offers links to company news from a number of online news sources.

Other Resources:

To find company information offline, try looking at Hoover's print directories, plus Standard and Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives, The Top 500 Companies, and ask your public librarian about other sources of company information.

Many libraries also offer their patrons access to databases, such as Reference USA, that provide extensive information about companies and businesses.  Although databases are offered online, they require a login; this is usually a current library card number. 

A good resource for finding a library is LibWeb.  This directory offers an easy-to-use way to find public, academic and special libraries by State and outside the U.S.