Company and Industry Information: Finding Information on British Companies

Company Annual Reports

• Use Capital IQ or the Library's Company & Industry Information Resources web page to locate downloadable copies.

• Companies House Online - www.companies-house.gov.uk/info Filing data, including date of latest filed accounts, for all companies registered in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

• FAME Detailed information on all active British quoted and unquoted companies, excluding banks and finance houses. Data includes financial history of the company, credit ratings, financial ratios and trends, directors, subsidiaries and holding companies.

• Capital IQ Company analysis, dividends, share prices, stock market indices for over 2,000 UK-quoted companies (also covers over 50,000 companies worldwide). - only viewable in Internet Explorer

• Good tip: search for annual reports and company news on companies by searching on Google. Type company name followed by investor relations eg TESCO investor relations

 Text and Comment

•  Financial Times Newspapers. Check catalogue record for print and microfilm holdings. Also available via the database FT.com.
• Business Source Complete. Business and management research database. Also searchable in mySearch
• Passport. Database of Euromonitor’s portfolio of statistical and full text market analysis and other company and product data sources.

• Mintel. Full text of Mintel's market research reports on domestic consumer products and services, plus UK marketing news from UK trade & retail press.

• Case studies are often used in business courses/units to illustrate management problems.
• They are usually written by academic institutions or professional bodies and intended to be used as teaching material.
• Some are based on real companies; some are entirely fictitious and designed to illustrate a particular situation.

You may find useful case studies by using our journal databases:

• Business Source Ultimate  - select “case study” as the document type
• Emerald Insight selecting 'Case Study' as the publication type

The following websites have some free content available:

Note: you will not necessarily be able to access all resources for free, some require personal registration and/or paid individual subscription:

• Business in the Community Case studies showing how businesses have benefited from creating a positive impact and responsible business practice.
• The Health and Safety Executive have case studies from large businesses and small and medium businesses, showing how they've benefited from implementing good health and safety practices.
• LearningEdge  Teaching case studies from MIT Sloan, covering entrepreneurship, leadership/ethics, operations management, strategy, sustainability and system dynamics.
• The Times 100 : case studies The website for The Times 100. Search by subject or by participating company/organisation. (Aimed at A-level business studies courses).
• World Business Council for Sustainable Development: case studies  A collection of case studies submitted by companies illustrating how they have improved their environmental performance.
• Business Case Studies Download free case studies involving real companies. You can search by company and keyword or by topic such as environment, finance, marketing, operations, people and strategy.
• The Case Centre (formerly ECCH: European Case Clearing House) is a leading provider of case studies in the UK and US. The collection can be searched free but most material is only available to academic staff within Bournemouth University.

Use your University login details to access databases and full text sources that BU subscribes to when you are off campus.