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.
