Researching Company Information: Home

When you are researching a company, it is worth having a look on the Web but, take into account that good company information is rarely free. Start with the company website to see what is available. If the company has a public facing website, have a look for any linked corporate pages, which are more likely to contain useful publications, such as annual reports, environmental statements, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports.

Companies House is where companies must be registered in the UK. You can search the register freely for basic information, including company filings, such as employees and appointment dates.

MarketLine is a global database offering data and information on companies and industries around the world. The following video shows you how to search this resource for company information.

Mintel is a market research database and we have access to UK content and reports on a range of consumer topics. The following video gives you an idea of how to search Mintel, but use the search box if you are looking for information on a specific UK company.

Case studies focus on a particular theme, company or industry and can be found in journals, books and other collections. You may be able to find case studies on your company, particularly if it is well-known.  Here are some options:

• Sage Business Cases are a collection of case studies on a range of business-related topics including Accounting, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Human Resource Management, International Business & Management and Marketing
• Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies includes over 250 case studies from around the world, covering a range of accounting and finance topics
• In MarketLine, use the quick search option to search for case studies.  These are neatly packaged reports providing research and data
• You will also find journal articles that focus on particular companies. A good starting point would be journal databases, such as ABI Global and Business Source Premier.  These databases cover both academic research material as well as practitioner content. When searching for journal articles on Emerald, it will indicate whether an item is a case study
• Look out for books that contain case studies – often these will be the ones with the Text and Cases subtitle. 

From the A-Z databases page you can filter by subject to see the key resources for Business and Management (or any other subject that is relevant from the list). The top box shows the 'best bets' for searching but here is a full list of useful databases for research:

• ABI Global (filter to Scholarly content)
• Business Source Premier (filter to Scholarly content)
• Emerald
• Sage
• ScienceDirect
• Taylor & Francis
• Wiley Online

Links to videos are available at the bottom of this page to help you with some of these resources.