Here are some tips on researching Public and Private companies.
Determine whether the company is publicly held (traded on a stock exchange), privately owned, or a subsidiary. You will be much more successful in obtaining information on publicly-held companies. Public companies must report certain financial information to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and their shareholders.
Identify the stock exchange ticker symbol for the company of interest. You can look up the Ticker symbols at Yahoo Ticker Symbol Lookup http://quote.yahoo.com
Once you have identified the ticker symbol, you can collect some summary information at any of the following sites. Type the ticker symbol in the ticker search box.
Check out Historical Data, Stock Splits, Company Profiles, Stock Quotes, Ratios, Charts, etc. all neatly arranged.
provides profiles, competitor information, industry rankings, and other data on over 50,000 public and private high-tech organizations. Search by company name, executive name, product, industry, ticker. Take a look at some of their fast finder searches.
is a widely respected service that provides timely and detailed information on over 13,000 public and private companies. Search by company name, ticker, keyword, executive, industry. Breakdown of companies in Hoovers.
This site lists all the current business headlines along with much of the same information as Hoover's. Search by company, industry, ticker.
http://www.disclosure-investor.com Nice way to get access to 10-Ks, quick company profiles.
A-to-Z pointers to annual reports on the Web, plus company data from Zacks Investment Research and links to corporate home pages.