Kresge Research Guides: ES 395 Entrepreneurial Management: Company Databases

Company Information and Company Lists

Mergent Online
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Current and historical (past 15 years) firm descriptions, statistics, financial information and ratios, annual reports, mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, long-term debt, bond ratings, capital stock, insider trading and supply chain for US and foreign companies. Mergent Online also provides access to Investext analyst reports.
Help guide

Technical notes: Company reports and financials can be exported to Excel.
Help guide
Mergent Intellect
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Private and public U.S and international company data, industry news, facts and figures, hierarchy/corporate family tree data, executive contact information, and industry profiles. Additionally, Mergent Intellect allows users to build lists of companies based on location, industry, size, etc.
PrivCo
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PrivCo contains business and financial research for over 600,000 non-publicly traded corporations, including family-owned, private equity-owned, venture-backed and international unlisted companies. Search for Venture Capital (VC) fundings, private Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) deals, Private Equity (PE) deals, and general company information. Private company profiles contain financials, corporate structure, key contacts, investors and industry information.
Technical notes: Personal account using @umich.edu email required.
PrivCo Video Tutorials
D&B Hoovers
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- One-stop shopping that includes strategic initiatives, business and geographic segments, strengths/weaknesses, and ratio comparisons
  - Great way to search for competitors and peers
  - Excellent resource for public and private companies in the US and Asia
Data Axle
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- several searchable database modules containing detailed information on:
  - more than 14 million U.S. businesses and employers;
  - 89 million U.S. residents;
  - 855,000 U.S. health care providers;
  - 1.5 million Canadian businesses;
  - and 12 million Canadian residents.
- Two other modules cover 50,000 new companies in the U.S. and over 300,000 U.S. new movers and homeowners each week.
Historic company records were created annually from Infogroup's U.S. Business Database; a snapshot of the data is saved each December. Contains company name, mailing address, SIC and NAICS codes, employee size, sales volume, latitude/longitude, and many more variables about each company. Data is available from 1997-2022 in downloadable flat files. Access requires UM login.
Access the Historical Datafiles via University Library
Orbis
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- Single largest database of public and private company information – including over 40 million firms worldwide.
- Excellent searching and downloading capability
- Access to Zephyr mergers and acquisitions database, also from BVD.
Technical Notes: Use of scripts or automated methods to download data from Orbis is strictly prohibited. If you require access to a larger dataset, please contact us at kresge_library@umich.edu.

Company Research Guide
Our comprehensive guide to company information includes links to additional databases, web resources and books, with information on company filings, litigation, performance measures and more.

NAICS and SIC Codes for searching databases

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
Used by government & business directories for classifying products and services by 2-6 digit codes. Replaced SIC codes in 1997
Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)
From Occupational Safety and Health Administration, this is one of the two standard industry classifications systems used world-wide

This was last updated in 1987, so it may not have very recent industries