Where can I find a company’s date of incorporation or year founded?

For UK companies

In Fame, the date of incorporation in the Company report, under the Legal & accounts information section.

For US companies

Use Field-Ritter Dataset of Company Founding Dates (Firms going public in the US 1975-2014, last updated 14 April 2014)

For companies in any country

In Datastream, Use a Static Request and the Worldscope datatypes:

• WC18272 – Date Company Founded
• WC18273 – Date of Incorporation

Finding working papers

There are many relevant sources for working papers, including:

• Manchester Business School (MBS) Working Papers (2001 onwards)
• Bank of England Working Papers
• Cambridge Judge Business School Working Papers
• Cambridge Centre for Financial Analysis & Policy Working Papers
• EBSLG Working Papers European Business Schools Librarians’ Group (EBSLG) Working Papers
• Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Working Papers
• IMD (International Institute for Management Development) Working Papers
• IMF (International Monetary Fund) Working Papers
• London Business School Faculty Research Working Papers
• NBER Working Papers (the National Bureau of Economic Research)
• SSRN (Social Sciences Research Network) eLibrary and Partners in Publishing (papers by publisher)
• Wharton Financial Institutions Center
• Olin Business School’s Links to Working Papers in Business
• Business Source Premier (EBSCO): choose Document type of Working Paper
• EconPapers provides access to economics working papers

Insider trading

Definition of Insider Trading (from Investopedia):

The buying or selling of a security by someone who has access to material, nonpublic information about the security.

Companies in any country

Use ThomsonONE.com

• Search for the company you want.
• Click on the Company Analysis > Ownership folder, and select Insider Holdings or Insider Transactions report.
• Click “Click here for full history” for historic holdings (older than 24 months).

Use Capital IQ

• Search for the company you want.
• On the long menu down the left, choose Investors > Public Ownership, then the Insider Trading tab.
• Only the last 12 months are available.

Use Bloomberg (available in the Finance Zone and Precinct Library)

• Try Bloomberg function PHDC for a specific company (e.g. VOD LN <F8> PHDC <GO>) and select Insiders, sorted by size.
• You can also look up the biographies of executies/directors (BIO) and then choose Reported Holdings.
• For stocks that have experienced the most purchases and sales by insiders, type: INSD and hit Go. Use the fields at the top of the screen to select country, time period, type of transaction. Click on a stock to display a graph of its historical prices with date of insider transactions.
• For more info, type: insider and hit the green Help key <F1>.

Companies in the U.S. only

Use WRDS

• Choose Thomson Reuters database, and then Insiders Data. Search by company ticker. Check the variables you want in your report.

Others

• Insider filings with the U.S. SEC are available through Edgar. Enter your company name or ticker symbol or CIK and Include Ownership forms.
• Insider transactions are available by issuer and reporting owner. Take a look at the website SecForm4.Com

Current and historical company annual reports

Company websites

For current annual reports, a company’s website is often the quickest and easiest option.

Databases that The University of Manchester subscribes to:

• PI Navigator: Include Annuals / 10K / 20-F (Company Reports and Accounts) in search criteria or select Perfect Filings tab and include Document Type UK Annual Reports or similar depending on your search.
• Mergent Archives: Select Search Mergent Achives for annual report search
• Thomson Research: Quick Company Search: and Content Profile, Filings
• Thomson ONE.com: Annual reports are under Filings tab

Annual reports websites

Try EDGAR for reports filed with US SEC.

Intraday quotes for equities and indices

Global source

Use Bloomberg.

For Equities and Indices:

Type the stock’s ticker symbol then hit [EQUITY] and hit <GO>

Choose: GIP – Intraday Price Graph

You can change the date and the time interval.

or

Type the index symbol then hit [INDEX], and then type GIP or GIT and hit <GO>

For example, to get intraday price intervals for the S&P 500:

SPX [INDEX] GIT and hit <GO>

Note: limited historical intraday data is available approx 900 trading days for GIP and 50 trading days for GIT.

Other sources

For US stocks, go to Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) TAQ (New York Stock Exchange Trade and Quote, or NYSE TAQ.

For historical (1983-1992) NYSE and AMEX tick-by-tick data and for historical NASDAQ (1987-1992) tick-by-tick data, click on ISSM – Institute for the Study of Security Markets

TICKDATA provides a commercial service offering intraday data from the UK and other exchanges.

Finally, Thomson Reuters Tick History database offers global intra-day Time and Sales, Time and Quotes and Market Depth content from the 1st January 1996 for an extensive range of Equities, including their derivatives. Access to this resource is limited; please contact us.

Business Ratios

In seeking out ratios for companies I would be reluctant to use free web-based services. The University of Manchester Library pays subscriptions to allow current students and staff to use numerous specialised financial databases. These are trusted sources, used for academic research and by commercial businesses.

The following databases are easy to use for obtaining ratio data.

 

Thomson ONE

 

Once a company has been searched for (see search box highlighted) and overview screen displayed, Key Ratios are shown. There is also a link for ‘All Ratios’.

All Ratios.

It is preferable to select ‘Annual’ as Report Type – this selection option is revealed from the icon on the right of the screen. Ratios are grouped into a number of categories: Valuation Measures, Valuation, Enterprise Value, Credit Statistics, Liquidity Leverage, Profitability, Efficiency, Management Effectiveness, Dividend, Growth Rates and Stock Performance.

 

Fame

 

Search for a company and display the Report.

It is then a simple matter of scrolling down to the section on Ratios. These are grouped into a number of categories: Profitability, Operational, Structure and Per Employee.

 

Bloomberg Professional

 

On the command line (top left of the screen) type the company identifier (quote/ticker symbol: TSCO LN = Tesco PLC on the London stock exchange), category of information via yellow market sector key (F8/Equity – company related) and function code (FA for Financial Analysis), followed by the green Enter/GO key. Click on the ‘ratios’ tab.

TSCO LN F8/Equity FA               ‘Ratios’ is further divided (e.g. Profitability displayed).

Hover over a ratio and right click, select ‘Definition’ for further detail (e.g. ‘Return on Common Equity’).

A different grouping of Ratios can be obtained from the Security Description [DES] function and the ‘Ratios’ tab.

 

Datastream

 

It is also possible to obtain ratio details from Datastream, but is a little more involved than the databases noted above.

A basic breakdown of a few ratios are displayed from the ‘Overview of Company Performance’ analysis option for the Equities (Company) Data Category.

More specific searches are possible for multiple Series (companies) and Datatypes (various ratios, for example) from the Excel Add-In version of Datastream.

For students at the University of Manchester we run regular Datastream training courses and other support material is available in the Database Suite.

Total returns

For Global data, try Datastream.

Use datatype RI total return index, and calculate total returns from the change in this index. (see post on Total shareholder return (share price return) for details)

For active companies, the total return index datatype (DS.ReturnIndex) is also available through Thomson ONE.com.

For US data, try WRDS, and choose CRSP.

Daily and monthly stock files and indices from December 1925 —

The files are updated annually.

Bloomberg can perform a Total Return Analysis for a security.

Type the company’s Bloomberg ticker symbol, hit the yellow EQUITY key, type TRA then hit GO.

To compare an equity’s total return against an index,

type the company’s Bloomberg ticker symbol, hit EQUITY, type COMP, then hit GO.

Exchange rates

Exchange rates available online:

• FRED Federal Reserve Economic Data for US exchange rates.
• Bank of England Statistics (select Interest and Exchange Rates) for UK Pound Sterling rates (including Pound Sterling against US Dollar forward rates).
• Historical Exchange Rates and Currency Converter from OANDA.
• Currencies Centre from Yahoo Finance.
• For historical exchange rates go to MeasuringWorth.com

Several databases also have exchange rates (current/spot and forward):

• Search Global Financial Database It has daily and monthly exchange rates for many different countries, in some cases going back hundreds of years.
• Use WRDS and select Foreign Exchange Rates.
• Use Datastream – select Category as Exchange Rates
• Use Bloomberg
  Hit the Currency Market Sector key (Yellow) and then hit GO/EnterFor the best and worst performing currencies relative to a selected currency,type WCRS and hit GO

Economic databases also provide exchange rate date: UK Data Service (formerly Economic and Social Data Service) provides IMF monthly, quarterly and annual data.

Listing and delisting information for stocks

Thomson Reuters Datastream has a datatype Basedate (BDATE), which is the date from which Datastream holds data for an equity series. This will either be the listing date, or the date when Datastream started covering a market (1964 for UK).

Datastream has a datatype Time (TIME), which is the latest date for which it holds data. This will either be the delisting date, or the current date for active equities.

To get all UK companies that had a listing at sometime during 2006, you could take the constituent lists FBRIT (Active) and DEADUK (Dead) and select those equities with BDATE 31/12/2005 (active during 2006).

See also Combine a static request into a time series request in Datastream.

Historical stock prices

There are several possible sources; see The University of Manchester Library’s Share Price Information Guide.

Subscription specialist financial databases

ThomsonONE.com (online, mainly active companies):

1. In the yellow top-left area Symbol/Name, search for the company by name or ticker.
2. In the main horizontal menu, choose Company Views > Price Chart.
3. Specify the desired time period and frequency. Add any other criteria such as another company or index.
4. Click Go to redraw the chart.
5. To download the data, click the Excel icon at the top.
6. Alternatively, you can use the Thomson Reuters Spreadsheet Link Excel add-in, available at the Library Finance Zone.

Datastream:

• Time series request, default datatype for equities(stocks) P(adjusted closing price), others e.g. UP (unadjusted price) also available.

Bloomberg:

1. Select company: search by name and select or type company Bloomberg ticker and hit EQUITY key (e.g. MSFT US [EQUITY] for Microsoft).
2. Type HP and hit Go for Historical Prices.
3. OR type GP and hit Go for Graph Prices and then copy and paste data into Excel.

Global Financial Database

Market specific sources

• CRSP for US stocks, available through WRDS
• LSPD (London Share Price Database) monthly prices for London Stock Exchange

Online sources

Often only active companies and less flexible than subscription databases.

• Yahoo Finance Enter your stock symbol and select historical prices

Further Information

• UPenn Lippincott’s Stock Prices Research Guide.