If you're looking for information on a company, there are a number of sources that can help; Athens is a good place to start - both Datamonitor and Global Marketing Information Database (GMID) offer detailed, current profiles for many global organisations across numerous sectors. Reports from both of these provide a full picture of a company, giving its history, product and competitor information plus a detailed SWOT analysis. WARC looks at companies from a strategic marketing perspective illustrated with campaigns, case studies and articles.
For financial information, company reports are available - try the corporate section of the company's own website, which may have financial information. Otherwise, there is the Annual Reports Service - reports can be sent to you by email (where available). The Northcote database also provides access to annual company reports.
Annual reports can also be found at Business Insight at Birmingham Central Library. They have copies of the most recent Annual Report of the FT100 List companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange. For selected companies, they also have a useful research collection covering a five-year period.These are all available for reference and can be photocopied.
Karen Blakeman gives details of other sources in this blog post, with a focus on free company information.
