World Bank Guide to Doing Business - guides to the business environment in 155 countries.

Business Gateway - a government portal to Canadian business information.

globalEDGE - a business portal operated by Michigan State University.

Judi Prokop Newman Information Resource Center,the University of Miami School of Business.

Locating Company Information on the Internet, May 1999.

The Virtual Chase - advice from one of the oldest and largest law firms in the U.S.

To Catch a Client, Or the Competition - out of date but still good.

Canada.com Canoe Money, Canadian Business Press, Marketwire or Canada News Wire - news releases.

Local Media: Business in Vancouver, Ottawa Business Journal

Specialty Media: Northern Miner

For full-text retrieval of old news articles, try a commercial database like Lexis Nexis, Factiva or FPInfomart. Note: If you don't have the time or expertise to search, an alternative is to use an information broker like InfoAction or Inside Information.

Frasers

Scott's Directories - Cdn manufacturer's, distributors, wholesalers and business services. Free basic search.

Canadian Company Capabilities - An online database with over 33,000 Canadian companies and 200,000 products and services.

High Tech: Contact Canada - 18,000 Canadian life science companies. CorpTech - 53,000 U.S. technology developers/manufacturers (some free information; subscription required for detail). Bioscan - 1,700 biotech companies globally. Recombinant Capital - Alliances - 13,000 alliances between biotech companies and pharma, universities or other firms since 1978.

Canadian Importers Database - provides lists of companies importing goods into Canada, by product, by city and by country of origin.

Canadian Exporters Catalogue - copies of the Catalogue are sent to all Canadian trade missions, embassies and consulate offices worldwide (see also the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service).

Canadian Trade Index - The Canadian Trade Index provides detailed information regarding over 26,000 Canadian companies, including 20,000 manufacturers, 11,500 active exporters, 7,000 distributors of products in Canada, and 3,700 service companies for manufactured products. Includes a comprehensive list of over 50,000 products and services.

BellZinc Business Directory (600,000 Cdn companies, 1.5 million international listings).

Thomas Register (173,000 Cdn and US companies). A buying guide of industrial companies, products and services. Search by company name, product or service. A similar product is the American Business Directory (available through Dialog as file 531 or on CD).

CSA Certified Product Listings - CSA is a Canadian organization with a worldwide network of offices and partners. It is not a government agency nor a consumer protection agency, but it does certify thousands of products as "safe".

CanadaOne Directory - Over 10,000 Canadian business and resources listings.

In addition to the above, there are offline resources such as CDs and hard-copy publications, many of which can be found in public or specialty libraries. The Canadian Business CD is one example. It contains basic information on 1.2 Million companies including 350,000 small companies. The U.S. Library of Congress lists over 70 Canadian business directories in its collection.

National Trade Data Bank is the U.S. Government's most comprehensive source of world trade data, consisting of over 130 separate trade and business related programs (data bases). Topics on the NTDB include: export opportunities by industry, country, and product; foreign companies or importers looking for specific products; how-to market guides; demographic, political, and socio-economic conditions in hundreds of countries; and much more. NTDB offers one-stop-shopping for trade information from more than 20 Federal sources.

Hoover's Online (lots of free info, but for $110 annually, you also get company profiles complete with financials and market analysis, in-depth industry snapshots as well as Hoover's Power Tool and Lead Finder for checking out the competition and developing sales leads.

Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage - mainly large public companies, but it also includes "hard-to-find" data on over 85,000 private companies and sophisticated search capabilities.

Kompass.com - 1.8m companies in 75 countries

1Jump is a database of over 1,000,000 company Web sites.

Your local library probably has a copy of Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations, a massive directory of trade and professional associations, but if you need to do a search online try these websites:

• Gateway to Associations - over 6,500 professional and scholarly associations around the world

• Associations on the Net - A service of the Internet Public Library

• Trade Association Forum Directory - A searchable database trade associations, guilds and federations located in the United Kingdom

• The Scholarly Societies Project - A directory of over 3,100 scholarly organizations from around the World.

There are about 80,000 charities registered with the Canada Revenue Agency. Their list includes the charity name, Business Number (BN)/Registration number, mailing address, and designation type.

In the U.S., more than 850,000 IRS-recognized nonprofit organizations can be searched at www.guidestar.org (the 990 form will give you names of those involved on the Board, phone numbers, affiliations, projects and financial information). You can also try the Nonprofit Organization Lookup. The Better Business Bureau maintains records on nationally soliciting organizations (they also have a great list of links).

Internationally, the ICFO maintains a list of national accrediting bodies, some of which may have searchable databases.

Consumer groups and government agencies provided advice on avoiding scams and frauds.

• The Better Business Bureau and BBBOnline maintain searchable complaint databases, but beware that many scams have short life spans (12-18 months). If a business is brand new, don't expect to find complaints.

• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission - Everything from misleading advertising to investment scams. Lots of useful information, including Franchise and Business Opportunity FAQs. The Canadian equivalent to the FTC is the federal Competition Bureau. In addition to advice and advisories, both sites maintain a searchable database of RN Numbers and CA Numbers.

Law enforcement and government agencies may wish to gain access to Consumer Sentinel, a searchable database of hundreds of thousands of complaints from consumers about identity theft and Internet cons, telemarketing scams and other frauds.

Other useful sites: ripoffreport.com, crimes-of-persuasion.com, PhoneBusters.com, quatloos.com, scamdex.com, and debunkers.org.

Who are competitors of the target company? Identify them by:

• Google-ing the product or service they offer to see who else is in the same line of business,
• checking the yellow pages to see who else is listed in the same category, and
• searching by NAICS or SIC code in directories such as Canadian Company Capabilities.

Does the company belong to a trade association like the Investment Dealears Association? If so, check the association membership list for their competitors.

What about investment analyst reports and market studies? Tip: A good backdoor to researching private companies is to read the prospectus of a public company in the same line of business. These documents will often include information on competitors.

There is no database that covers all civil court actions in Canada. A thorough search requires manually searching the records at individual court registries (usually with the help of a file search agent). The situation improved in September 2004 with the arrival of BC Court Services Online; it searches every registry in British Columbia (both Provincial and Supreme Court files). There is also canlii.org - a free nationwide search but it is limited to decisions and judgements from higher courts, thereby missing the majority of cases filed which do not go to trial.

Equifax Commercial Law Record ($) - summaries of over 400,000 corporate legal actions from courts across Canada.

Recommended:  Doing Legal Research in Canada By Ted Tjaden.

In the U.S., PACER provides almost complete coverage of civil, criminal and bankruptcy filings in U.S. Federal District Courts. It allows searching by name and retrieves full court dockets summarizing all the filings and actions that have occurred for each case. Courtlink (LexisNexis) provides a commercial interface to PACER (read how they compare).

Recommended:  Court Rules, Forms, and Dockets a free searchable database, maintained and continually updated by Margaret Berkland.

There are two files in LexisNexis that provide summaries of court actions: U.S. District Courts, Civil and Criminal Filings and Combined State Civil and Criminal Filings. For the full dockets, you still have to use PACER, Courtlink, or Westlaw.

Securities violations (Canada): BC, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec.

Securities violations (United States): federally, the Securities and Exchange Commission and NASD Regulation, are responsible for prosecutions and disciplinary actions, but there are also state-level regulators.

Commercial Credit Reports are available from Dun & Bradstreet ($) and Equifax ($). Note: These reports contain both self-reported information and information reported by banks. The latter is more reliable.

Superintendent of Bankruptcy Insolvency Name Searches ($)

Bankruptcy.com - search their news archives, receive the Troubled Company Reporter, or join one of their mailing lists. Links to books, conferences and local bankruptcy rules. Worldwide coverage.

Internationally, you may wish to try skyminder.com. They claim to have credit and business information for 50 million public and private companies worldwide.

Bureau van Dijk provides information gathered from chambers of commerce, state/regional filings, and annual reports. US & Canada reports include D&B information.

Here's a simple trick to finding a parent company or subsidiary: Use Google Advanced Search to Find pages that link to the (company home) page.

If you subscribe to Lexis Nexis, it has a file called DCA where you can find out who owns whom. The key restriction is that it only covers US companies with at least $10 million in revenue and non-US companies with at least $50 million in revenue. Executive Affiliations is another good D&B  database (available through Lexis Nexis, File: EXAFFL). It contains information on individuals associated with more than one company.

CorporateAffiliations.com ($) has corporate linkage information and company profiles on nearly 200,000 of the most prominent global public and private parent companies and their affiliates, subsidiaries and divisions.

Only publicly traded companies need to disclose the names of their directors. This information can be found:

1. on the company website;

2. on the website of the exchange where shares of the company are traded (E.G. the TSX); and

3. in documents filed on sedar or edgar.

Note: livedgar.com ($) obtains its content from the Edgar database, but it has a more user-friendly interface, enhanced search capabilities, and value added features such as annual reports, company news, and financial quotes. Other commercial sites for public filings include: 10kwizard, EDGAR Online, Lexis and Westlaw. If you have an account with LexisNexis, you may also wish to search two of their databases: Executive Affiliations and Principals.

Private companies are under no obligation to disclose their directors, but this information can generally be found by searching company incorporation records. The problem is that you generally can't search by director / officer name - you have to search by company name. You could try the FP Directory Of Directors and the FP Canadian Federal Corporations and Directors . These and other databases can be searched via an FP Person Search.

Sometimes, director / officer information is available through indirect means such as: media reports, industry publications such as Stockwatch, Equifax Commercial Credit Reports ($) or business directories like Canadian Company Capabilities. Multiple sources can be searched via FP Advisor ($).

The abbreviation "SA" suggests a company incorporated in France or South America. A complete list of international company extensions is at: http://www.corporateinformation.com/defext.asp

• Penn Library Foreign Companies - Research Guide #7
• Foreign-Trade.com - databases, directories, research tools, country reviews, etc.
• U.S. Library of Congress Business Reference Services Foreign Company Research

Search newsgroups using Google Groups.

Rumours, innuendo, and hot stock tips of dubious value can be found at stockhouse.ca, Raging Bull, F*ckedCompany.com ("basic" results are free), and Silicon Investor.

Tip: Brokers, promoters, shills, and investors post comments about publicly traded companies. Be very skeptical about what you read (especially if the stock is traded on the OTC Bulletin Board)!

A company incorporated provincially may do business outside of its province of incorporation as long as it registers as an extra provincial corporation. The following are links to company incorporation records for each province:

• BC ($)
• Alberta ($) Also try Licenced Business. Not all companies, but it is free.
• Saskatchewan ($) The "entity number" is the incorporation number.
• Manitoba ($)
• Ontario ($)
• Quebec - "Matricule" is the incorporation number. "Radiation d'office" means "struck from the registry". A "director" is an "administrateur" and a shareholder is an "actionnaire".
• New Brunswick ($) - No charge to confirm if the company exists and whether it is active or not, but further info, such as date of incorporation requires payment of a fee of $3 per search.
• Nova Scotia
• PEI
• Newfoundland Registry of Companies

In the U.S., incorporation records are held at the state-level. Just find the state then click on the link for the Secretary of State ( for state-by-state descriptions of what is available, visit Business Filings Databases).

In the UK, Companies House holds corporate filings. Basic information is free; there is a small fee for full documents.

Securities legislation imposes a requirement on "insiders" (usually directors and senior officers) to file reports if they trade in the securities of their company. An insider is defined as anyone in a "special relationship" to a publicly traded company. This includes major shareholders (holdings in excess of 10% of the company). In Canada, these filings can be searched online via sedi.ca.

In the U.S., information on major shareholders / insiders is available through these commercial databases:

• TFSD Ownership Database (Dialog),
• Thomson Financial Insider Trading Monitor (Dialog),
• Vickers Securities Report and Institutional Holdings (Nexis),
• LivEdgar and
• Bloomberg.

There is no shortage of investment newsletters and analyst reports offering advice. Some are self-published like the Kaiser Bottom Fish. Others are published by brokerage firm such as Merril Lynch or industry watchers such as Standard and Poor's, S&P Stock Reports, Moody's, and Zacks

There are also many media sites that specialize in financial news. ROBTv.com, Stockwatch and CBS Marketwatch are just two examples.

You may find these investment portals useful: About.com Investing Canada, Canoe Money, Yahoo! Finance, advice-for-investors.com, globeinvestor.com, and moneysense.ca. For the international perspective, try Site-by-Site.

Why not go directly to the horse's mouth? Check out company news releases using Canada News Wire or CCNMathews. For public companies, delve deeper by reading annual reports and financial statements at SEDAR (Canada) and EDGAR (U.S.).

Interesting site: EarningsWhispers.com for unofficial earnings estimates (for US companies only).

International Trade Canada - Businesses may register with the Virtual Trade Commissioner to receive market reports, business leads, news and events related to a particular industry or foreign markets of interest.

Also check out export.gov. It is the portal to all export-related assistance and market information offered by the U.S. federal government

Google Finance is a good place to start.

All public filings for publicly traded companies can be found at sedar.com (for Canada) or Edgar (for the U.S.). SEC Info searches Canadian and US filings simultaneously. Note: livedgar.com ($) obtains its content from the Edgar database, but it has a more user-friendly interface, enhanced search capabilities, and value added features such as annual reports, company news, and financial quotes. Other commercial sites for public filings include: 10kwizard, EDGAR Online, Lexis and Westlaw.

An excellent international source for more than 35,000 public companies in 120 countries is The Scannery. Company Annual Reports On-Line (carol.co.uk) and northcote.co.uk provide access to the full text of annual reports.

Canadian Stock Exchanges: TSX Venture Exchange (TSX Venture), Montreal Exchange (ME), and the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange (WCE).

In Canada, public companies are regulated by provincial securities commissions and brokerage firms are all members of the Investment Dealers Association. In the U.S., each state has a state securities board, but the overall regulator is the Securities and Exchange Commission and broker / dealers are all members of the North American Securities Dealers.

Stockwatch is a great specialty publication which covers Canadian publicly traded companies. Click on News / News Search, then do a full text search by keyword. To search for individuals, also try Analytics / Participant. Free 30 day trial subscription.

Hoover's IPO Central profiles companies that have filed notices to go public.

Who registered the company website? Do a whois look-up at Network Solutions, Completewhois.com, or allwhois.com. For Canadian domains ending in ca, try: cira.ca

Tip: Sometimes looking up a domain registration record requires two steps. The first step is a search using one of the links above. Usually this will tell you who registered the domain, however, sometimes the registrant will be a domain registration service like Tucows. If that is the case, go to the website of the domain registration service, then use the whois lookup feature on their site.