Public companies are traded on stock exchanges or over-the-counter and are subject to regulation by securities commissions/authorities. They are required by law to report publicly and much information on public companies is available including mission statements, company profile, news, history, the executives and officers of the company, brief product descriptions, stock information, financial statements and ratios, career information, community relations/corporate social responsibility statements, etc.
If you are interested in exploring all options available to you in detail for corporate financial research, you'll want to check out our Finance Guide, also linked from the "Finance" tab in this guide.
The following are specific recommended databases for public company research.
Annual reports and filings are a useful source of information on publicly traded companies. Consult our specialized guide for more information.
The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that was established in 1996. It scrapes web sites and archives the content so you can follow the changes in companies web sites over time. Recently someone was looking for information on bank accounts from 2008 to the present for each of the big Canadian banks and used the Wayback machine to find the information successfully.
