Researching Foreign Entities

With data on over 70 countries and two million companies, www.Kompass.com offers a very reasonably priced collection of information to obtain addresses, corporate structures, names of key figures, company turnover information, company descriptions, product names and services, trade and brand names, and location of branches. Kompass offers free searches by geographic region, company name or product, executive name, and supplies NAICS, SIC and other government-related codes.

SkyMinder, an affiliate of CRIBIS S.p.A., based in Bologna, Italy, is an incredible aggregator of other corporate business and credit reports. A complete source list for Skyminder can be located at www.skyminder.com/basic/info_sources.asp.  The source list includes a note on how often the data is updated for each of the 46 sources.

When researching a foreign company, do not neglect contacting a business-affairs correspondent in the country of the company being investigated. Prepare to have a lot of patience and time when waiting for the information to be delivered. A list of U.S. embassy locations abroad is found at http://usembassy.state.gov. 

Publicly-owned companies may be traded on foreign stock exchanges. Each exchange and country provides information on listed companies and will have its own oversight group. Two resources to find a list of foreign exchanges are:

www.tdd.lt/slnews/Stock_Exchanges/Stock.Exchanges.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges

Copyrighted excerpt from a new book, Business Background Investigations, by Cynthia Hetherington.

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The Background Investigator Goes To South Africa
In a continuing series, The Background Investigator, is sending its attorneys to various countries around the world to explore the justice systems and bring back to you their findings. This month Fred Frankel visited South Africa. Here is his report:
Doing Searches In South Africa: What You Need To Know
by Fred Frankel, esq.
In South Africa, I met with the Clerk in the Cape Town and Johannesburg courts.
Their systems only track the cases locally.
All cases must start at the lower courts where they retain a record of it.
Therefore, if you know of a case, the local Court would have the record in their system.
You would have to know whish court.
Otherwise, the Criminal Records and Fingerprinting Division office has all arrests and criminal matter for the whole country.
The searches there are the most thorough if you are interested in a nationwide search or a clearance certificate.