Competitive Landscape: Corporate Affiliations
As you survey your industry to find out more about the major players (either competitors, suppliers, or buyers), you will need to determine whether each corporate entity is a parent company or a subsidiary firm; whether it is foreign-owned or an affiliate (e.g. joint venture) of a foreign company; and whether it is a public or private company.
By U.S. law, extensive financial filings and other corporate information are generally available for firms whose shares are publicly-traded on one of the U.S. stock exchanges. These 12,000 companies currently include about 2,000 that are based outside of the U.S. Financial information for subsidiaries and affiliates of public companies are almost always consolidated with the corporate filings of the parent firm.
The vast majority of business establishments in the U.S. (as well as around the world) are privately owned. For these millions of companies, the most that you might find out is their physical or online location. Some rudimentary idea of a company's size (number of employees, sales or revenues, assets) may be gleaned from its listing in an industrial directory such as the Dun & Bradstreet Million Dollar Database.
Check corporate structure, affiliation, and status in one of these:
- America's Corporate Families and International Affiliates.
(DANA REF HG 4057 .A164). Provides names, address, sales, employee number, principal products and officers for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations as well as foreign subsidiaries of U.S. Corporations. Geographic area, SIC code, and subsidiary to ultimate parent indexes.
- Directory of Corporate Affiliations (DANA REF Index Table H, KLMR Business Counter 1). Includes key officers, addresses and products of over 28,000 companies. Arranged in 3 sections: foreign parent companies with international subsidiaries and divisions; U.S. parent companies with foreign holdings; and a geographical index.
- Who Owns Whom series from Dun & Bradstreet: there are separate volumes for Australasia, Asia, Middle East & Africa [DANA REF HG 4009 .W464], Continental Europe [DANA REF HG 4132 .Z5W5], and North & South America [DANA REF HG 4081 .Z65 W48].
EDGAR Documents and Annual Reports
Public companies in the U.S. are required to electronically file periodic reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These include annual reports to shareholders and 10-K and 10-Q reports to the SEC; refer to A Guide to SEC Filings from Primark for descriptions of these and other filings. [http://www.primark.com/GuidetoSEC.pdf]
One of the best sources of these EDGAR Documents is FreeEDGAR; other sources are listed on the Stock and Commodity Exchanges Guide. [http://www.freeedgar.com] and [http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/research_guides/busi/stocks.shtml#C.2]
Many firms now post their annual report to shareholders on their corporate Website. The following links will help you locate them:
"Annual Report Surrogates"
The following sources contain extracts from company annual reports and filings.
- Compact D/SEC from Primark is a CD-ROM with a searchable database of extracts of corporate filings for all public companies in the U.S. Content includes both financial data and textual information. (CAMDN, DANA REF CD-ROM, KLMR Business Workstation 2)
- Compustat/Research Insight allows you to selectively access and analyze data on approximately 20,000 companies in the COMPUSTAT North America database. Coverage includes all companies trading on US and Canadian exchanges during the past 20 years, including sponsored ADRs of foreign corporations. (KLMR Business Workstation 1) Ryan Womack has prepared a Research Insight User's Guide, which is a PDF document. [http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~rwomack/ri.pdf]
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FIS Online, the electronic version (Rutgers-restricted Access) of the Mergent/Moody's Manuals (DANA REF Index Table I, KLMR Business Counter 2)
- Standard & Poor's Corporation Records (DANA REF Index Table I, KLMR Business Counter 2)
Ka-Neng Au, 16 Jan 2003