The amount of company information that is available is largely determined by the company's structure/status as a public or private company.
A publicly traded company sells all or a portion of itself to the public via an initial public offering (IPO) on a stock exchange. Thus, shareholders have claim to part of the company's assets and profits. Public companies are required to file disclosure statements with the SEC. These filings include annual reports (SEC Form 10-K), quarterly reports (10-Q), major events (8-K), and proxy statements.
In most cases, a private company is owned by the company's founders, management, or a group of private investors and does not sell shares to the public. Private companies may issue stock and have shareholders, but their shares do not trade on public exchanges and are not issued through an initial public offering (IPO). Private companies are not required to complete SEC filings.
The SEC makes available a comparison chart that outlines the differences between a public company and a private company.
Researching public companies is easier than researching privately held companies because of the amount of information the company is required to disclose and report to the SEC.
1. Company Websites: provide basic information including name, headquarters, contact information, and products and services.
2. SEC Filings: all companies, foreign and domestic, with publicly-traded securities in the United States are required to file registration statements, periodic reports, and other forms electronically. The documents, with the exception of a handful of forms, are then published on EDGAR – the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval System – for the public to view. If you’re searching for a company on EDGAR and cannot find it, the SEC recommends that you check with the company, the company’s home state’s Secretary of State, the state securities regulator, other government regulators, or in certain books and databases
3. Company Profiles/Directories: provide more detailed information on a company including history, executive officers, sales figures, major competitors, and number of employees.
4. Annual Reports: these documents published by public companies discuss their products and financial positions for the previous year.
5. Rankings Lists: categorize companies at local, regional, national, or international levels into lists based on factors such as revenue and growth.
6. Secretaries of State: Companies are required to file with the Secretary of State of the state in which they are established. The National Association of Secretaries of State has a locator to find the website for each state's secretary of state.
7.Social Media: look for individual, company, and product names on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
8. Court Records: Access Dockets in Bloomberg Law (which draws data from PACER) and state court dockets.
9. Intellectual Property: Patents, trademarks, and copyrights may provide company information about the IP-holder.
Online Practice Centers generally combine several useful features into one portal. They allow practitioners to stay current on case law and statutory law, updates, and news. They also provide resources specific to the practice of law, such as M&A forms, guidance documents, toolkits, and sample agreements.
Bloomberg Law Corporate Transactions Practice Area
Users can find M&A laws and regulations. Drafting guidelines, sample forms and checklists for public and private M&A transactions are available. Deal Analytics allows users to search for transactions based on deal size, stake sought, deal attributes, industry, and region. The DealMaker document database contains over 800,000 legal documents such as M&A and spin-off transactions. Other useful tools include news and analysis, as well as deal spotlights.
Lexis+ Corporate and M&A Practice Center
Provides authoritative, current, and comprehensive coverage of Mergers and Acquisitions in a central location. The page contains a Top Sources section that has case law, statutes, company & financial sources, secondary sources, law firm memos, news & analysis, as well as Matthew Bender forms & checklists.
Lexis+ Practice Advisor Corporate and M&A
Users can select various Tasks, such as structuring and planning a deal, due diligence, joint ventures, tender offers, and M&A provisions. Users can also select Content Type, such as practice notes, forms, clauses, checklists, and secondary materials. This page also includes Key Developments and Law360 News: Mergers & Acquisitions.
Westlaw Edge Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Area
Users can access cases law, statutes, court rules, EDGAR filings and disclosures, M&A agreements, secondary sources, and more. Users can also access Tools, such as news, Securities dockets, Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform, and Drafting Assistant. Practitioner Insights for Mergers and Acquisitions is also available from this page that highlights M&A analysis and news. Featured publications directs users to helpful publications such as Acquisitions and Mergers: Negotiated and Contested Transactions.
Westlaw Practical Law: Corporate and M&A
Users can navigate by topic, such as corporations, private M&A, public M&A, joint ventures, and LLCs. Users can also navigate by resource type, such as practice notes, standard documents, standard clauses, checklists, tool kits, and more. There are also recent bankruptcy updates available. Other features include state-specific Corporate and M&A resources and comparison tools, summaries, analysis, and custom reports covering a range of transactions and filings and recent corporate and M&A updates.
The following resources will keep you well-informed and up-to-date with news, trends, and updates in the field.
The research guides listed below provide additional information on how to perform company research.
