Background Research: Company Information
You can uncover potential conflicts of interest by finding out more about the companies with which your subject is closely associated. If an individual is in a position of control as a director, officer, or major shareholder, you may also research the company for any association with a business failure, scandal, or offence.
Director & Officer
Private Companies
FP Advisor, a service of FPInfomart, provides a Person Search that retrieves records from seven sources covering Canadian public and private companies: Financial Post Corporate Surveys, Financial Post Directory of Directors, Canadian Federal Corporations and Directors, ProFile Canada, Owen Media's Canadian Trade Index, Thomson Gale - Wards and Thomson Gale - Encyclopaedia of Associations..
For additional coverage of private companies that are provincially incorporated, try Dun’s Market Identifiers - Canada, available through LexisNexis and Dialog. You can search by name of an individual or by company.
Equifax Commercial Credit Report contains information on officers and owners. In addition to individual credit reports, Equifax provides reports on over 2 million businesses in Canada. Unlike an individual credit report, which requires the consent of the individual, there is no consent needed to obtain commercial credit reports. More information on credit checks is covered in the Financial Background section of this toolkit.
Public Companies
All publicly traded companies are required to make regular filings. You can search through securities filings for Canadian public companies by the name of an individual using a commercial SEDAR service such as LivEdgar, DisclosureNet, or Canada Stockwatch. If you do a text search for a person’s name, you may find the roles they play in Canadian public companies.
Companies trading in the U.S., including many small Canadian companies trading on the OTCBB, file on EDGAR. Vendors that allow keyword searching of EDGAR filings include: DiscloureNet, LivEdgar, 10KWizard, EDGAR Online, LexisNexis and Westlaw.
Canada Stockwatch provides a Participant Search that lists a history of corporate involvement as director, officer, or shareholder.
Bloomberg records include the current directors and officers for most Canadian and U.S. public companies. You can search by person using keyword searching.
Additional sources on LexisNexis are Executive Affiliations and Principals, which include the names of owners and officers of over one million U.S. companies that have gone bankrupt or discontinued operations.
Major Shareholder
Search SEDI by name to find out if the individual is an insider of a Canadian public company. Directors, officers, and 10% security holders must report their trading in the stock of their company online through SEDI.
The TFSD Ownership Database on Dialog provides details on institutional owners, 5% owners, and stock ownership by insiders for U.S. public companies. Dialog also provides the Insider Trading Monitor that extracts insider trading information from SEC filings since 1986.
Vickers Securities Report and Institutional Holdings on LexisNexis also extracts stock ownership information from SEC filings.
Bloomberg is another source useful for identifying major shareholders.
LivEdgar provides an insider trading report compiled from SEC forms.
Employee
When considering the suitability of a candidate for employment in the securities industry, you may verify their educational proficiency by contacting the registration department of educational institutions to confirm information provided by the applicant.
Knowing the employment history of a person will help the firm determine whether the person has a history of past misconduct that may make the person unsuitable to be a representative of the firm.
Internet social network source such as ZoomInfo and LinkedIn can be used as supplementary source to verify education and employment history. However, user’s discretion is recommended, as information may not be as reliable as other sources listed in this toolkit.
Company Directories & Financials
Many databases provide comprehensive information about companies including name, address, contact numbers, jurisdiction of incorporation, industry, parent companies and subsidiaries, financial information, trading data, and more.
FP Advisor on FPInfomart is a source with information on Canadian public and private companies.
Dialog Company Directories [CODIR] searches over 37 directory sources, providing contact information, executives, key financials, and other financial data.
LexisNexis All Company Information includes company directories, profiles, and SEC filing sources. A search of Dun’s Market Identifiers (Non-US) will provide additional coverage for private and public companies worldwide and is a source for finding corporate relationships.
LexisNexis provides a service called Company Analyzer that compiles reports from U.S. public record sources.
Factiva Company Quick Search searches information on public companies worldwide and private companies through Dun & Bradstreet information. This service also provides trading data and charts.
Canadian public company filings are available on SEDAR. Commercial resellers such as LivEdgar, DisclosureNet and Securities - Canada Centre on Westlaw Business provide more functionality for searching and display.
Companies listed on U.S. exchanges (AMEX, NYSE, NASDAQ) and those trading on the Over-The-Counter Bulletin Board file company reports through EDGAR. Commercial resellers such as LivEdgar, 10KWizard, EDGAR Online, Lexis SEC Filings and Westlaw SEC Filings or Securities - US Centre on Westlaw Business provide more searching and display options.
Canada Stockwatch provides information for companies trading in North America. It is known for its database of company news releases and trading research services.
Bloomberg provides information on companies trading on North American and international exchanges. It includes company background information, financials, news, trading data, and details of capital raising activities.
Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Canada Finance provide free trading data for U.S. and Canadian public companies and mutual funds.
The Better Business Bureau can be a good supplementary source. It provides reports on businesses and charities in both Canada and US.
Incorporation
Incorporation records can provide date of incorporation, status, addresses, and names of directors and officers. Many U.S. states provide their corporate records online at the Secretary of States' websites. If you don’t know the state of incorporation, consider the Comprehensive Business Report from LexisNexis. It provides records of incorporation, limited partnerships, and fictitious business names for US states (excluding Delaware, which can be searched separately, either through DE Secretary of State from LexisNexis or Delaware Division of Corporations.)
All incorporated companies file annual and occasional reports with their provincial registrar. You can find a list of provincial corporate registries by going to Strategis: Corporations Canada. For U.S. incorporated companies (including many companies headquartered in Canada), you can get state incorporation information from the Secretary of State. They are also available in LexisNexis' Corporation Filings.
BC Online provides records on active and inactive companies incorporated in BC. The corporate summary provides contact information including the names of directors and their mailing addresses, as well as the incorporation date and number. The corporate summary links to documents that the company filed online (online filing began March 2004), such as articles of incorporation and annual reports. You can find similar services in other provinces at the Strategis: Corporations Canada site. OnCorp Direct now provides registration information not only on corporations registered in Ontario, but also on corporations registered in the rest of Canada as well as in the U.S.
TheCanadian Federal Corporations and Directors database, available on FPInfomart, provides information for over 225,000 companies incorporated federally under the Canada Business Corporations Act. Information about federal incorporations is also available at Strategis.
