There may be times when you need to research a particular company - its background, its key employees, its financial and share information, its competitors and market position. Much of this information is often publicly available via the company's own website, but the Library also subscribes to several databases which provide this kind of material, some of which will not otherwise be openly available.
There are three databases you can use to find company information:
Please select the tabs in this box to learn more about each of these databases.
FAME is a very comprehensive database containing information on over 11 million companies and unincorporated businesses in the UK and Ireland, with 2 million companies in a detailed format, 280,000 companies in a summary format, details of 1.3 million companies that are active but not required to file accounts or have yet to file accounts, and 6 million companies that are no longer active. These are included so you can research patterns in default and confirm previous existence.
The kind of data it includes:
When using FAME, look for the little orange question mark icon at the top of the page - this will bring up the built-in Help pages. There is guidance on using FAME, including walk-throughs and videos that you can watch or download.
We also have a short introductory video to using FAME that you can watch below.
Marketline is the best database to search for global business and company information, covering the automotive, consumer, energy, financial services, healthcare and technology sectors. It contains over 10,000 company profiles, 2,400 industry profiles and country and sometimes city profiles as well. So if you researching a particular global industry or sector, or want to find information on a large, multi-national company, Marketline would be the best database to use.
Bear in mind that Marketline only contains data on companies of a certain size, whereas FAME contains all UK and Irish company information.
You may want to download the Marketline user guide to give you some direction when you first start using Marketline - link - or watch some of the Marketline guidance videos - link.
We also have a short video showing the basics of using Marketline available to watch below.
ProQuest One Business is a comprehensive business database, containing journal articles, eBooks, case studies, news, videos and market, company and industry reports.
One of its features are its Company Topic Pages, where you can find company overviews, recent news relating to that company, company reports, journal articles about or mentioning that company, as well as magazine and trade articles, and related companies in the same industry.
Bear in mind, as with Marketline it only covers companies of a certain size, and is also quite American-focused.
The video below will show you how to do a company analysis using One Business.