Factual and Investigative Research Guide: Business Records & Information

The extent of information available and the way in which it is present varies from state to state. Some states provide only a business name lookup, while others offer search by officer and director names, and UCC filing information.

Core, related, and supplementary databases for company and business research.

Lexis Advance's Public Records portal provides databases for locating businesses and obtaining (some) business filings.

PrivCo is a resource for business and financial research on non-publicly traded companies, including family-owned, private equity-owned, venture-backed, and international unlisted companies.

MarketLine provides original company, industry, country, city and financial reports and data based on published research and primary and secondary data sources. It also includes current market news and information on financial deals. Content types include: Analyst insights and themed reports on cross-sector megatrends; Industry reports, case studies, and interactive models; Company profiles and case studies; Country profiles, city profiles, and country outlook and global risk reports

Mergent Online is a database of corporate information on over 25,000 U.S. public companies, over 35,000 foreign public companies, and over 34,000 private companies. Information available for each public company includes: A complete corporate history; Lists of subsidiaries, property holdings, and key personnel; Up to 25 years of annual and quarterly financial data; Up to 10 years of scanned, full-image annual reports, including SEC filings; Extensive information about the corporation's current long term debt; Links to recent news reports; Reports on insider and institutional owners.

Value Line is a comprehensive source of investment information and advice on companies, industries, markets, and economies. It covers over 6,000 stocks, 18,000 mutual funds, 200,000 options, and other securities, and it is updated daily with current stock data. For each company, Value Line includes proprietary company ratings, analyst's commentary and forecasts, and selected historical financial information. Value Line also includes market-wide commentaries, rankings, and other analyses.

Companies House is a registry of company information for England and Wales; the registrar of companies for Scotland and/or the registrar of companies for Northern Ireland as the circumstances require.

Search records from several different sources, including: SEC filings (including insiders, events, reports, proxies, offerings, registrations and ownership); Patents (including utility applications, utility grants, design patents, plant patents and reissues); Court dockets (from Federal District Courts, Federal Bankruptcy Courts, a partial group of dockets from the Circuit Courts of Appeals, Court of Federal Claims and Court of International Trade); Department of Justice releases; U.S. Attorney’s Offices releases

Nonprofit Explorer includes summary data for nonprofit tax returns and PDFs of full Form 990 documents.