companies

LexisNexis Academic
Provides access to business and financial news, US and international company financial information, market research, industry reports, and actual SEC filings. Search features permit comparison of companies based on criteria such as sales, income, and number of employees. Follow the 'Business' link to find company annual reports, financial, and credit reports. Check your local library to see if they provide access. 

Mergent Market Access

How to access: If you are a UBC student, staff, faculty or in-person library visitor you can access this resource.

Provides access to US and international public company data. This database also contains data on companies that were acquired, went bankrupt, liquidated or merged out of existence from 1995 forward. Users can compare companies and export data into programs like Excel.

Reference Canada

Provides information on more than one million businesses throughout Canada. Includes name, address, phone number, contacts, number of employees, annual sales volumes, line of business, and credit rating. Vancouver Public Library subscribes to this online directory so check with your local library about access.

Reportlinker.com

ReportLinker is a professional search engine which gives you access to an exclusive database of 1.2 million market reports and counting. Use this search engine to find official Industry reports, Company profiles and Market Statistics. Please note: information listed on this website may be very expensive but it may be possible to get access to specific reports elsewhere.

Finding information on public companies is considerably easier than finding information on privately-held companies. Information on public companies is readily available online, or at your local library. Another good starting point is the list of resources in the next section of this Accelerator Guide: Find Competitors. Unlike public companies, private companies are not required to file with the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR). Searching for private company information is considerably more difficult and will require a lot of patience, and a healthy dose of creativity. 

Reuters Industry Center

Offers US industry-wide ratios under "Benchmarks".

The Blue Book of Canadian Business

Detailed profiles for over 60 Canadian corporations, including missions/values, history, operations, social responsibility and executive biographies. Also contains directory type information for 2,500 Canadian companies, a ranking of the top 500 companies and a list of the top 400 Canadian stocks. UBC affiliates and in-person community researchers can obtain access to a print version of this periodical (here are details on how to locate it at UBC in Vancouver).

TSNN.com
Online directory of trade shows, exhibitions, public events, conferences and seminars.  Please note: free registration required.

Vault.com

Brief and freely available industry overviews, company listings and career information. Heavily focussed on US industries but there is some European and North American info available.