Reference at Newman Library

Three Ways to Get a List of Subsidiaries

A recent reference question forced me to re-learn how to find a list of subsidiary companies and their addresses. In the past, Corporate Affiliations was my go-to for this question, but now that that database is defunct, I had to look for other options. Here are three to try out:

Business Insights: Global

Once you find the detail page on a company, look for the “View Company Hierarchy” icon:

Screenshot of sample company detail page in Business Insights: Global

Reference Solutions

Look for the “Corporate Tree” icon on a company detail page:

Screenshot of company detail page in Reference Solutions

Uniworld Online

Thanks to Harold Gee for reminding me of this database! This one offers the most search options, info, and functionality (e.g., you can download results in an Excel file and have the foreign and domestic subsidiaries broken out separately).

Screenshot of Uniworld Online

UPDATE: See the comments to this blog post for more options, including “Corporate Affiliations” within the Nexis Uni database.

Updates to the ReferenceUSA Historical Data

Over the summer we purchased two files that include all of the businesses and many of their attributes that were in the ReferenceUSA database for 2013 and 2014. Our historical data collection now covers 1997 to 2014. The data is stored in large delimited text files, and current Baruch students, faculty and staff can request extracts from these files here:

https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/confluence/display/geoportal/ReferenceUSA+Historical

There’s also a link to this page from our list of databases, under ReferenceUSA Historical Data.

This resource is for users who want to study historical change in individual business establishments in a given area over time. In most cases users who make these requests need to have experience with working with large datasets. All of the requests I’ve filled to date are from graduate students or faculty.

Patrons who are looking for current data or who have basic requests should use the ReferenceUSA database instead. Patrons who are looking for historical or contemporary summaries of business establishments (i.e. sums or counts of businesses by type and geography instead of lists of individual businesses) can use the Census Bureau’s County or ZIP Code Business Patterns data instead.

SIC Codes Not in Business Insights: Essentials

Before Gale relaunched Business & Company Resource Center as Business Insights: Essentials last year, you could look up a company and see the company’s lines of business classified by SIC and NAICS. It looks like the new Business Insights: Essentials Platform now only features NAICS classification:

Business Insights Essentials--no SIC codes

 

I noticed this when a student was in chat yesterday asking for “Business & Company Resource Center” (as directed by the student’s professor) to look up SIC codes for a company. I mentioned the change to NAICS only classification and also pointed the student to Mergent Online, where you companies are classified with both NAICS and SIC:

Mergent Online--SIC and NAICS

TRIAL: Proquest Historical Annual Reports

We have a trial to Proquest Historical Annual Reports until January 11, 2013. Access is available on campus only for the trial.

This database contains the annual reports (1844-current) available for over 800 companies, 43,000 reports, 1.3M pages. Searchable PDF images with indexed data such as: financial, Fortune 500 ranking, industry classification, key people, geographic location, auditor and related companies. It can also be browsed by company name, related names, industry or date.

It is also cross-searchable with the other Proquest databases (except the statistical ones currently on trial).

New Database: Mergent EventsData

We have added Mergent EventsData to our list of databases which gives us access to on-going updated information on stock-splits, mergers, tender offers, partial/full calls, name changes, etc.

We have access to: U.S. Corporate Actions, International Corporate Actions for all regions, U.S. Corporate Dividends, International Corporate Dividends for all regions, U.S. Unit Investment Trust, U.S. Fixed Income, U.S. Municipal Called Bonds, EventsData Portfolio Alerts, U.S. HSD Equity Pricing (20+ Years History), International HSD Equity Pricing (20+ Years History).

New database: PrivCo

We now have access to PrivCo.

PrivCo is a source for business and financial data on major, non-publicly traded corporations, including family owned, private equity owned, venture backed, and international unlisted companies. They cover over 30,000 companies, including financial data, M&A and funding activity, ownership structure, and more. They also have over 10,000 investors, and advance search options by company and investor, giving us the ability to generate fields of data within seconds based on criteria such as location, sub-industry, revenue and employee sizes, financial backing and more.

All the data is easily exported to Excel. The research reports can be printed in PDF.

Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index issues yearly report; expands coverage of LGBT health benefits

A new Corporate Equality Index report  recently issued by the Human Rights Campaign has expanded the criteria for LGBT health benefits offered by employers.  The report covers 850 businesses, including law firms. Of these, 190 received top scores of 100. Rankings include “Best Places to Work” and Top Law Firms for Equality.

The Human Rights Campaign is currently undertaking the Jewish Organization Equality Index (JOEI), one of its newest projects. It is a first-of-its-kind effort to analyze and rate U.S. Jewish non-profits on their policies, practices and programs as they are pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees and members.

 

New database: Mergent Bondviewer for Corporate and Municipals

Today, Mike Waldman has added Mergent Bondviewer to  the Newman Library databases.

This database includes both U.S. corporate and municipal bonds.  This is the first time we have had access to extensive municipal bond information online in the library.  Bonds and notes are promises to repay money  that has been borrowed with interest, at specific time periods.   They do not convey ownership in a company or in a municipality.  Active issues are those in which some debt is still outstanding.  Inactive issues have been repaid.

There is very good help available on the database.  I have learned the following from the help, and asking our vendor representative for details:

Corporate or Municipal Portfolios can be created to save search results.  A maximum of three portfolio per email address  can be saved at one time. Maximum number of issues in any portfolio is 200. Use Baruch email address to create portfolio.

Here’s a description for the library’s web page.

Includes active and inactive U.S. corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and retail notes, and offers ratings, historical pricing, summary of issue’s covenants and provisions, and portfolio tracking. Limited coverage through 1950; extensive coverage begins in 1993. To access, click on Enter Bondviewer. Use Baruch email address to set up maximum of three portfolios per email address. For individual companies, long term debt information also included in Company Details through Mergent Online database.

This  information was provided by Mergent:

Right now there are roughly 273,846 securities going out to customers in the corporate database.  There are about 2,659,445 maturities (around 278,352 total issues containing those maturities) for the muni side.

Corporate Issue Inclusion Criteria: the database includes publicly underwritten corporate securities issued in the United States: Yankees (U.S. dollar-denominated securities issued by foreign issuers), U.S. agencies, supranational securities, convertible bonds, Short, Medium and General Term Notes (Notes began in September 1993); high yield, adjustable rate securities, ESOP securities, underwritten exchange offer securities, equipment leased-back securities, strips (not secondary market derivatives); and mortgage-backed agency securities. In addition, Rule 144A issues (including non-U.S. dollar denominated securities) are included in the data base on a best-efforts basis.

The database does not track publicly traded bonds that are issued outside of the United States, including Canadian, foreign bonds or Eurobonds (securities registered in Europe, but issued by U.S. firms). At this time the database also does not include secondary insured remarketed bonds nor certificates of deposit; municipal securities, REMICs, CMOs, PASS-THRUs, PAY-THRUs or other Asset Backed securities.

Although the database does have some publicly traded bonds issued outside of the United States, we do not have a provider for this information. If we come across an issue of this type, and are able get the information, the security may be added to the database.

There are a handful of securities in the database from the late 1800’s through 1950. Limited coverage starts in 1950 with the number of securities representing each year thereafter growing almost exponentially. Extensive coverage begins in 1993.

Municipal bond coverage—which has not previously been available in any of our databases:

Municipal Bonds (Coverage of 2,659,445 bonds)

 

The following types of bonds are in Mergent’s coverage for Municipal Bonds:

All General Obligation Bonds including short and long term notes including taxable bonds

  1. All Revenue Bonds including short and long term notes including taxable bonds
  2. All Variable Rate Bonds including bonds which have a daily, weekly, monthly…etc reset.  As well as Auction Rate, Floating Rate, Adjustable Rate and Index Linked Bonds.  Coupons are not reported on Index Linked Bonds or Variable Bonds in the daily, weekly, monthly or adjustable modes.
  3. All Derivative Bonds on a best effort basis
  4. All Zero Coupon Bonds including Capital Appreciation, Deferred Interest, Compound Interest, Stripped Principal
  5. All Build America Bonds and Recovery Zone Economic Bonds (except for tax-credit bonds) including make-whole calls. (only for 2009 & 2010)
  6. Qualified School Construction Bonds (If not a Tax-Credit)
  7. Others – Certificates of Participation, Certificates of Obligation, Tax Anticipation Notes, and Bond Anticipation Notes…etc.
  8. Remarketed Bonds including Tender Data
  9. Hospital, Industrial, Serial, Term, Housing, Education, and Healthcare Bonds are in coverage
  10. New Issue Bond Program Bonds
  11. All Prerefunded, Unrefunded and Secondary Insurance CUSIPs.

The following types bonds are not in Mergent’s coverage for Municipal Bonds:

 

  1. 144A’s of any type
  2. Commercial Paper (unless there is a valid CUSIP)
  3. Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB).
  4. Any type of Bond which is only paid out as a Tax-Credit
  5. Bank Bonds
  6. Some Private Type Deals

Before I became a librarian I worked as legal assistant in a public finance department of a Minneapolis law firm so if you have any questions about municipal bonds, or other offerings, please let me know.

 

 

 

Audit Analytics as Source for Info on Company Executives, Board Members, Compensation

For a number of student projects, they are looking for compensation of executives and members of the board of directors.  This information can be found on a number of our databases–historically on the Corporate Library, and searching proxies on Mergent, Edgar Online I-Metrix. Thomson Research, and the SEC site.

Audit Analytics is also a very good source for this information.  You can search by public company name or ticker symbol.  Under the Governance and Compensation tabs, you can locate the names, ages, positions of executives and board members, committees on which they serve, any other board(s) they serve on, and their compensation for attending board meetings (as well as their attendance record at such meetings).  The source of the information is provided, such as the proxy filing, or an 8-K filing.

Changes in executives and board members are also indicated, with the source of the information, and the reason for the change.  For example, this week I did a workshop in which I showed the students AEO, whose ceo recently announced his retirement and the head of the audit committee had submitted his resignation citing “too many commitments.”