“The perennial problem child of business research is private companies”.
 Ojala, M., 2005. The perennial problem of private company research , Online, Vol. 29, Issue 5, pp. 43-45

It can be a challenge to find financial data for private companies, especially those registered outside Europe, and in some cases you may find little more than sales figures. However, the following services may help you:

Private Spanish companies:

Sabi
Of the 900 000 Spanish companies on this database, the majority are privately owned. Up to 10 years’ balance sheet, income statement and ratio data are available for these companies. Please be aware that not all companies are required to declare all of the accounts items and you may therefore find some “missing” data, especially for smaller companies. The date of the latest accounts is usually a few years’ old (currently 2004). You can sign up to be alerted when new accounts are available for a company that interests you by clicking on the Alerts button within Sabi.

Sabi is available from Library > E-Resources > By alphabetical order . It can be accessed off-campus by current students, staff and faculty and members of the IESE Alumni Association*. Please read instructions in off-campus access to e-resources .

*Please note: Members may not download data.

Private European companies:

Amadeus
Contains accounts for 250 000 private European companies, as well as 6000 public ones. The accounts data is taken from 35 different regional sources (e.g. national company registers) then standardized and republished by the vendors of Amadeus. Up to 10 years’ balance sheet, income statement and ratios data is available. As with Sabi, not all accounts items are available for all companies. Reporting deadlines vary between countries and financial year-end dates between companies, and therefore so does the date of the latest accounts. You can sign up to be alerted when new accounts are available for a company that interests you. Click on Alerts within Amadeus.

Amadeus is available from Library > E-Resources > By alphabetical order . It can be accessed off-campus by current students, staff and faculty and members of the IESE Alumni Association*. Please read instructions in off-campus access to e-resources .

*Please note: Members may not download data.

Private companies from the rest of world:

Hoovers Online
Contains basic financial data for the larger or better-known private and government-owned companies and not-for-profit organizations worldwide. IESE Library has a “premium” level subscription and does not have access to all the data within Hoovers.

Hoovers is available from Library > E-Resources > By alphabetical order . It can be accessed off-campus by current students, staff and faculty. Please read instructions in off-campus access to e-resources .

National Association of Secretaries of State (USA): Corporate Registration
US companies and not-for-profits must register with their Secretary of State and file certain documents with them. Some states provide online access to company filings which may include annual reports for private companies (sometimes this data is simply non-existent). There is usually a small fee per document. You can link to each state’s Secretary of State web page at the NASS Corporate Registration  website.

Worldwide company registries
Companies House UK maintains a list of links to company registries worldwide at their worldwide registries  page. RBA Information services provides a similar page - Official Company Registers  – and the ICAEW maintains a Knowledge guide to international company registration . The links on these three pages are to official company registries that may or may not provide accounts information for private companies. A small fee is usually charged.

An alternative approach: search the news

Sometimes the only way to obtain financial data about private companies is to search the news, trade press and wire services for sales or other key figures. You can search over 9000 sources on Factiva, an international news database.

Factiva is available from Library > E-Resources > By alphabetical order . It can be accessed off-campus by current students, staff and faculty and members of the IESE Alumni Association. Please read instructions in off-campus access to e-resources .