Snapshots
For a quick profile of a public company's financial position, use one of the following:
"Annual Report Surrogates"
Among the many surrogates or summaries of corporate financial information are these time-tested sources:
Mergent Online, the electronic version (Rutgers-restricted Access) of the Mergent/Moody's Manuals, covers 22,000 public companies worldwide. (Latest issues: DANA REF Index Table I, CARR Business Counter 2; 1901 onwards: DANA HG stacks.
Value Line Research Center and Value Line Historical Reports are the online equivalents (Rutgers-restricted Access) of Value Line Investment Survey
Compact D/SEC from Primark. On CD-ROM from 1988 to 2006. (CAMDEN, DANA REF CD-ROM, CARR Business Workstation 2)
Standard & Poor's Corporation Records (DANA REF Index Table I, CARR Business Counter 2)
Hoover's Handbooks (DANA Reference Desk, CARR Business Counter 1) or Hoover's Online. The detailed company profiles are now accessible via WestlawNext . (Rutgers-restricted access) After you select News, Hoover's Company Profiles is a link on the right menu and you can search by company name or ticker symbol.
Executive Compensation
Compensation details are often buried in the company's Proxy Statement filed with the SEC. Start with the EDGAR Company Search and limit your results by Form Type "DEF 14A" (Schedule 14A is the definitive proxy statement). In many cases, these filings go back to 1993.
SEC Filings
EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, performs automated collection, validation, indexing, acceptance, and forwarding of submissions by companies and others who are required by law to file forms with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Refer to the Guide to SEC Filings from Thomson Research.
The US SEC maintains annual listings of International Registered and Reporting Companies, those foreign-owned firms that are required to file periodic reports.
EDGAR Filings and Forms include 10-Ks (annual reports for US firms), 10-Qs (quarterly reports), 20-Fs (annual reports for foreign firms) and DEF 14As (proxy statements) of public companies from 1994 forward.
EDGAR documents are also available from:
- EDGAR Pro (subscription required)
- Intelligize (subscription required)
- SEC Info (registration required)
Pre-EDGAR documents may be purchased from:
The Dana Library has a collection of 10K reports from 1973 to 2002; as well as annual reports for NYSE and AMEX companies from 1966 to 2002. These reports are on CD-ROM from 1989 to 2002 (DANA REF LaserDisclosure Workstation); earlier years are on microfiche. Extracts from 10-K reports and annual reports to shareholders may also be found on Compact D/SEC, a monthly series of CD-ROMs, with annual and quarterly data from 1987 to 2006.
Below is a typical table of contents for a 10-K report.
Financial Restatements
Over the years, the US Government Accountability Office (formerly US General Accounting Office) has prepared several compilations of companies which restated their financial statements:
- Financial Statement Restatements: Trends, Market Impacts, Regulatory Responses, and Remaining Challenges (October 2002)
- Financial Statement Restatement Database (January 2003)
- Financial Restatements: Update of Company Trends, Market Impacts, and Regulatory Enforcement Activities (July 2006)
- Financial Restatement Database (August 2006)
- Financial Restatement Database: reissued (2006)