4 October 2007.
The
following is an excerpt from Business Background Investigations,
a new book scheduled for release later this month.
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 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
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges
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