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Business, informatics, management and accounting: Company information

A guide to finding information in business, informatics, management and accounting. Includes links to key resources and sources of help.

Company information: where to start?

Company paperworkDuring your course, you may need to find out information about companies.  This guide will help you to find some of the key resources to use, but please do ask us for help if you need to!  The type of things you might want to find out include:

  • Company details - where they are, what they do, who the directors are?  What is the structure of the company (e.g. parent companies, subsidiary companies)
  • Financial data - is the company making a profit?  What is their turnover?  Where is their most recent annual report and accounts
  • Industry analysis - how does the company compare to its peers?  Who are the competitors?  What is the market like for this industry?

For a quick search you can often start by looking at the company's website.  They may provide their report & accounts, press releases and some key personnel information.  All companies vary as to how much information they provide on their websites, and sometimes you might need to look at a company's parent to find anything useful.

We have lots of useful databases that provide a huge amount of current and historical data & analysis for companies.  Have a look below...

Company details and financial data

You can look up a company on these databases to find basic contact details, what the company does, the structure of the company etc.You can also use these resources to find financial information about a company. You can find out about profits, turnover and numbers of employees and other details. Some of these resources enable you to create lists of companies that match certain criteria.

Annual report websites:

Reference books

You can search Summon for online reference materials.

Finding industry analysis

Several of our databases look at industries and sectors, giving analysis, financial data and trends.

Finding news and comments

For more help...

If you need more help using any of these databases, or finding specific information, please contact us.  karenandruth@reading.ac.uk

 

Help videos

You will need to login using your University email address and password to view the video. For the best experience please view on a larger screen such as a tablet or laptop instead of a mobile phone.

How to run a basic search in FAME:

Creating a list of companies in FAME:

D&B Hoover - basic searches: