Reference at Newman Library

Finding Institutional Investor Information for a non-American Company

A patron was looking for institutional investor information about a publicly traded company based in Hong Kong.

After searching in vain using databases such as S&P, Hoover’s, Mergent and even Thomson One I consulted with a colleague.

Linda E. suggested checking Thomson Financial, where we were actually able to find annual reports for the company going back in time.

I referred the patron to the Subotnik Financial Services Center to have a look in Reuters 3000 and Bloomberg Professional.

Out of curiosity, this afternoon Harold and I took a walk downstairs to have a look to see what we could find about it with our own eyes. Sure enough we found more information. Reuters 3000 and Bloomberg Professional allowed us to look at the latest quarterly holdings of the company’s institutional investors.

It turns out the particular company is also in fact traded here in the US, but only on the OTC pink sheet market.

This was a lesson to me that there is a lack of coverage for international companies and pink sheet listed companies in some of our library databases and that both Reuters 3000 and Bloomberg Professional are a good resources for this type of information.

Many thanks to Linda E. and Harold!