Research Guides: ENTR 3P98: Family Business: Selecting a Family Business

Family Business Rankings

A criteria for your assignment is to select a company that appears in the The World’s Top 750 Family Businesses Ranking by Family Capital.

The World's Top 750 Family Businesses

Things to consider

When selecting a family business for your assignment, it is recommended that you consider the following:

Is the company publicly traded? Publicly traded companies will make more information available about how they are run, decision-making, financials, and other key pieces of information that can assist with your analysis.
Are there noteworthy key issues the company has faced in relation to succession, legal proceedings, etc.? Having a few options of issues to choose from will help with gathering information to provide further analysis.
Is there information about your company and its industry in some key library databases? The amount and depth of information available about companies and industries varies. To ensure you have more information to work from, it is recommend that you do a few searches in library databases to get a sense of the amount of information you might be able to use.

Preliminary Databases

To get a better sense of the kinds of information that are available on your company and it's industry, try searching for your company or the industry name in the following databases and browse through some of the resources in the results:

Historical annual reports:

SEDAR (Canada)
This site, developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators, provides free access to Canadian securities filings from January 1, 1997 onwards. Filings include annual reports, prospectuses, financial statements and press releases. It includes public companies and investment funds.
EDGAR (United States)

Ownership, financials, location, and summary data:

S&P Capital IQ This link opens in a new window
- Contains financial data, analytics and research.
- Combines deep information on companies, markets and people worldwide with robust tools for analysis, idea generation and workflow management.
- Covers equities, fixed income, capital structure, credit ratings, transactions, private equity, ownership, macroeconomics and commodities.
- NOTE: Brock students, faculty, and staff must register individually as a New User using their Brock University email address & follow the directions to complete self-registration.
- Permitted Uses
Mergent Online This link opens in a new window
- Contains global business and financial data including company and industry profiles and annual reports.
- Coverage: Current plus up to 15 years of historical data.
- Permitted Uses

Industry data:

IBISWorld Industry Research Database This link opens in a new window
- Produces and publishes over 425 Canadian and 1,300 US Industry Reports at the 5-digit level of the NAICS code.
- Contains trends, statistics & analysis on market size, market share of major companies and industry growth rates.
- Permitted Uses
- The Library subscribes to the following modules in IBISWorld: Canada Industry Reports (NAICS), United States Industry Reports (NAICS), Canada Industry iExpert Summaries, United States Industry iExpert Summaries, United States Specialized Industry Reports, United States Specialized Industry iExpert Summaries, China Industry Reports (200 industries), Canada Industry Provincial Reports (50+ Ontario industries), and Canada Collection of Macroeconomic Business Environment Profiles.