Accounting & Taxation

For a quick profile of a public company's financial position, use one of the following:

• Google Finance
• Reuters Stocks
• Yahoo! Finance

Investext Snapshot is a collection of company (and some industry) reports from analysts at over 400 investment banks, brokerage firms, and independent research organizations. This collection provides access to the latest three reports on more than 40,000 publicly-traded companies and the two most current reports on 125 industries. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

The Mergent Equity Research Report offers summaries of: recommendation, analysis, business, earnings momentum, recent developments, price momentum, peer companies, a price performance graph and financials fundamentals graph. Available as part of Mergent Online under the Reports tab. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

Value Line and Value Line Historical Reports is a comprehensive source of information and advice on approximately 1,700 stocks in 97 industries on U.S. stock markets. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

The Official Board offers charts for "the world's 20,000 largest corporations" (registration required)

CogMap is an organizational chart wiki for companies and organizations. Do note that the information is self-reported and almost anyone can edit the content.

More detailed charts of large corporations are available for purchase from The Conference Board.

Profiles in Diversity Journal includes many articles featuring developments and innovations in the Corporate Sector.

Summaries of Corporate Diversity Programs are available from Vault.com

And there's The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity.

To find a company's annual report to shareholders or its reports filed with regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, please consult the guide to Corporate Annual Reports.

Basic information on a company's initial public offering (IPO) may be found at NASDAQ Initial Public Offerings and the New York Stock Exchange IPO Center.

MarketLine provides over 12,000 profiles of public companies from around the world. These profiles are based on published research as well as primary and secondary data sources. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

Mergent Online, the electronic version (Rutgers-restricted Access) of the Mergent/Moody's Manuals (DANA REF Index Table I, CARR Business Counter 2) has much information on public firms around the world, with historical background, up to 25 years of financials, details on debt and capital structure, Mergent's own equity research, and includes reports on insider and institutional owners.

On the Web, insider trading reports by company or insider name are available, with a six-month delay, from SECForm4.com. More current reports (Form 4) by company or insider name are available from the Security and Exchange Commission's EDGAR system.

Mergent Horizon provides a 360 degree view of a company's competitors, suppliers, partners, and corporate customers, using a detailed hierarchical classification system for actual products and services. Mergent Horizon covers over 6,000 actively traded public companies in the United States. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

One freely-accessible online resource that offers information on a public company's suppliers, competitors, and customers by product segment or company division is CSI Market.

The historical volumes of the Mergent/Moody's Manuals are now available online on Mergent Archives, with brief company and financial information going back to 1909 for some firms. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

To facilitate financial transactions, each public company is identified by a nine-character number called the 'CUSIP' (Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures) number. The first six digits represents the company, the next two character is for the specific class of security or type of debt, and the last character is a check digit. Also, financial instruments actively traded on an international basis are identified by a similar nine-character CINS (CUSIP International Numbering System) number or a twelve-character ISIN (International Securities Identification Number). More details About CGS Identifiers is available from CUSIP Global Services. [The UK equivalent to the CINS is the SEDOL.]

CUSIP numbers may be found on Mergent Online. (Rutgers-restricted access)

Each debt issue (bonds, notes, debentures, etc.) for a company will be assigned a different CUSIP number (although the first six characters will be the same). Moody's ratings for company debt may be found by CUSIP using Factiva (Rutgers-restricted access)

Employers can be identified by an EIN, an Employer Identification Number issued by the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes. EIN Finder offers a free lookup but registration is required.

Another identifier is the alphanumeric BIC or Business Identifier Code (sometimes referred to as the Business Entity Identifier or BEI). A lookup tool is provided by SWIFT, an international cooperative organization that facilitates financial transactions, particularly between financial institutions.

Proxy voting records of mutual funds and other institutional investors for corporate shareholder decisions may be found at the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Another source of voting records is ProxyDemocracy.