“I need to find information about a private company and I can’t find anything - help!”

October 14th:

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Private companies are tricky – why?There is very little they are

required to report……so they don’t! Even if they are huge (like the “Big

4” accounting firms) (and many of them are small)

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Is there any hope? Yes!Capital IQ – (the cadillac of

databases!) Most detailed business descriptions, lists

of executives, products, competitors, etc. M&A, investments data Financials – sometimes

Gotcha: access controlled by username/password which must be issued to you by Erin Wachowicz

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Additional hope! PrivCo – larger private companies;

focus on M&A, VC, investor activity; great Advanced Search Hot feature: source of financial

information for private companies* [and IP accessible]

Additional hot feature: they are happy to take requests: you can email them about a company and they will see what they can find for you and add it to the database!

*Amount of $$$ info varies by company, no guarantees.

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More hope! MarketLine – some reports on private

companies; if no company report, may still bring up a case study, company news, or financial deals information

Article databases: ABI/Inform, Business Source Premier,

LexisNexis, Factiva (aka: “combing for crumbs”)

And speaking of Factiva…

Searching Factiva effectively: No double quotes needed… in fact, words

entered in a series are automatically searched as an exact phrase*

Special syntax: same, near# Special wildcard symbol: $ Notice the filter options on the results

page!

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*So don’t just type in a series of words – you’ll get Zero results unless that exact series of words appeared in an article somewhere!

Bonus tip of the week!

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Caveats – private company research

There is no “one answer” – none of the resources reviewed here will have every private company

Each source will have differing amounts of information

There are no guarantees!

First and foremost: Get your expectations under control.

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Join us next week, Oct. 21, 5:00pm for:

“We have to report on a new deal every week in Prof. Couch’s Private Equity class- how can I possibly find what I need?!”With a virtual appearance of special guest Michael Linchitz of The Deal Pipeline!