About the Course

Do you have a problem with a company or industry and want to know more about it? Do you feel frustrated not knowing how to find the info you need? Do you want to fight back more effectively but get overwhelmed trying to find things online? Do you wish you could get a step ahead and finally find contracts and government plans before they hit the headlines?

The Know Your Enemy online course is designed for you. Whether you are a single mum fighting a landlord, a worker challenging your boss, part of a grassroots movement or campaign,  a student campaigner or a freelance writer – this course is designed to give you the practical skills you need to ‘Know Your Enemy’.

What will I learn?

This self-paced, online training, through a series of video tutorials, gives you practical skills to be able to:

• Get clear and organised – know what you need to research and how
• Research securely – learn simple tactics for online security
• Use search engines effectively – prevent overwhelm and find the info you need faster
• Build a company profile – mapping its ownership to the highest level
• Find directors, board members and other key players – find out who pulls the strings
• Find shareholders
• Read company accounts – learn simple strategies for cutting through the jargon and finding the information you need quickly
• Find government contracts
• Connect the dots between lobbyists, companies and politicians – know how to find donations to political parties and more
• Write and submit a Freedom of Information request
• Map out company supply chains and get industry insight about risks and vulnerabilities
• Undertake offline research – from speaking to workers to physical surveillance of factories
• Write up and share your research with the world

Interested? Enrol here for free.

The post Course launch! Learn online with Corporate Watch appeared first on Corporate Watch.

15-18 July 2019

London campus, 33 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1AG

Click here to book now.

About the Course

Corporations wield a huge amount of power over our lives. But we’re not taught how to find out how they work, who’s behind them or how to follow the money. This 4 day course will give you the tools and understanding you need to expose and challenge corporate power and corporate corruption.

• identify key sources of information and data on corporations

• identify the people behind a company

• dissect company accounts

• track where the money goes

• develop your investigation and research skills

• think strategically about how you can challenge corporate abuse

The course will be participatory and practical. Throughout, participants will be shown how to plan and conduct an in-depth investigation of a company of their choice.

No experience is needed: we’ll start from the basics and give you all the skills you need.

Topics we will cover include:

• Investigating and profiling companies: exposing abuse; thinking strategically; identifying ‘weak points’.

• Understanding the corporation: History of the corporate structure; the limits of the law, regulation and CSR.

• People behind the corporation: tracking and mapping directors, shareholders and different types of corporate forms; mapping the corporate structure, locally, offshore and globally.

• Following the Money: reading company accounts and other documents; who’s making money and where it’s going; how is the company performing financially.

• Using the State: obtaining information on tax, regulatory and legal processes; and conducting freedom of information requests.

Delegate fees

Larger organisations: £500

Individual/smaller organisations/union branches: £300

Low/unwaged/students: free (places limited)

Discounts available for organisations booking multiple tickets.

How to book

Click here to book tickets through the University of Liverpool website.

Email contact[AT]corporatewatch.org for more details or call 02074260005.

About the Trainers

The course will be run by Professor David Whyte and Richard Whittell

Professor David Whyte is an leading international expert on corporate corruption and corporate crime. He has been teaching courses on those subjects at the University of Liverpool for the past decade. Recent books include How Corrupt is Britain (2015), The Corporate Criminal (2015, with Steve Tombs) and Corporate Human Rights Violations (2016, with Stefanie Khoury).

Richard Whittell is a member of the Corporate Watch Co-operative where he has produced numerous investigations into companies, in tandem with groups challenging corporate abuse. He is an experienced trainer, having taught company investigations and reading accounts to unions, university courses, campaign groups, NGOs and journalists. He also wrote Corporate Watch’s Investigating Companies: a Do-It-Yourself Handbook.

Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism.

This event is hosted by the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice Public and Practices Unit and engage@liverpool.

The post Investigating Companies Summer School appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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As well as speaking to the company and its workers directly, you can find a lot of useful information in the company’s publications.

In general, the information that companies publish about themselves will be most useful for finding out details of their finances, staff and shareholders. Their reports and updates on their operations are unlikely to portray the company as anything other than squeaky clean.

ANNUAL REPORT

Many companies – and pretty much all big companies – produce an annual report together with their accounts, describing their activities over the previous year, including details of their operations and headline financial results. You can usually download the annual report for free from the company’s website. The reports of the bigger multinationals describe their operations in different countries and a breakdown of their various operations, worksites, staff numbers and pay, and, usually, directors’ pay. Some companies will also include a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report in their annual report, while some will release this separately (see Corporate Watch’s What’s Wrong with CSR report for a critical view).

Remember that these reports are intended to present the company in the best possible light in order to maintain investor and shareholder confidence. They are usually big, glossy publications, full of pictures of smiling people talking about how great the company is. Unlike the accounts, they are not audited.

WEBSITE

Companies’ websites are becoming increasingly informative, and include most of the information in the annual report, plus news, history and press releases, as well as updated sections on senior staff and their operations. Most are expanding their social media profiles, so following their Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other accounts can be a good way of keeping up to date with their announcements.

ACCOUNTS

Reading a company’s annual accounts is the best way to find out how much money it has. They won’t give you all the information you want but they’re the best source available, short of speaking to the company’s accountants. Among many valuable nuggets of information, the two main things the accounts give you are:

o a snapshot of what the company owns and what it owes;

o details of its financial transactions over the last year, including how much profit it made, how much tax it paid, how much cash it has and how much it paid to its shareholders.

See section 2.6 for an introduction to reading and understanding company accounts. You’ll usually be able to download the accounts of bigger companies from their website. If not, you can get them from Companies House (see below).

The amount of information a company publishes in its accounts will depend on how big it is. Smaller companies are allowed to disclose much less information – often just a balance sheet, a basic income statement and a few notes. Disclosure requirements also differ according to the country the company is registered in. Some tax havens don’t require companies to publish accounts.

INTERNAL DOCUMENTS

For obvious reasons, documents not intended for public viewing – for example memos, emails, presentations, strategy documents or evaluations – tend to be far more candid about the company and its operations.

Your best bet for getting these is from a member of staff who’s annoyed at the company and sympathetic to what you’re doing. If you’ve got the time and inclination, you could even try to get a job with the company, though you’d have to be in it for the long haul to get access to really sensitive material (see section 1.4).

Update emails or newsletters that many companies send to their employees often include new details of recently awarded or completed contracts, site changes or new offices, staff and director changes and management/training/computer systems in the group (though you’ve often got to wade through a sewer of corporate speak to get to the good stuff).

Management accounts are produced for internal use, often a few times a year (as opposed to the publicly available statutory accounts that are produced annually). They are intended to inform decisions regarding the management of the company and will usually go into a lot more detail than statutory accounts, breaking revenue down by individual product line, or showing the cost and profits of individual sites, for example.

INVESTOR PRESENTATIONS

Publicly-listed companies and some private companies also produce investor presentations and updates for their shareholders and potential investors, which contain financial news and analysis. The information provided for shareholders may be more enlightening than that shared with the public so can be useful to have a look at.

You can usually find them in the Investor Relations section of a company’s website, although they are often password-protected from the general public.

Buying a share should allow you to access this. It’ll set you back a few quid but it may be worth it for the access it gives you. You’ll have to do this through a stockbroker – either online or by phoning them up and screaming “BUY!” in your best banker voice.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (AGM)

Buying a share also gets you an invitation to the company’s AGM, where directors present updates on the previous year’s activities and future plans. Votes are held to approve dividends, elect the board of directors and to approve their remuneration, as well as on certain other issues arising and resolutions. Emergency general meetings (EGMs) are held when a matter arises that cannot wait till the AGM. If you don’t have a share but know someone who does, you can go as their ‘proxy’. Otherwise, AGMs of larger companies are often covered by the mainstream media and the business media, so you can at least track any significant decisions or developments through them. You can also go along to identify the shareholders that are attending and try to talk to them.

REGULATORY NOTIFICATIONS

Publicly listed companies are also required to submit a variety of regulatory notifications depending on the stock exchange their shares are listed on. For the London Stock Exchange (LSE) this includes half-yearly reports in addition to the annual accounts, profit expectations, significant changes to their financial structure, transactions with directors, and any proposals for mergers or acquisitions. You can normally download these from the LSE website, where you can also find the company’s current, and historical, share price.

BOND PROSPECTUS

A bond prospectus produced by a company when issuing new debt to the market will likely be a big, dense document but it may contain information about a company’s finances that you won’t find in the accounts, as well as details of the terms of the bond (how much interest it will pay, what it is secured against and so on).

Many are publicly available and can be found through a web search using the exact name of the bond, as stated in the accounts (see section 2.5). Otherwise you’ll have to ask the company for a copy or access the investor relations part of their website.

The business media and other business information sources provide lots of useful analysis of a company’s finances. See section 3.5 for details.

OWNERSHIP

The owners of a company are the shareholders.

If you want to find the shareholders of a private limited company (one with Ltd after its name – see section 2.2), first check the back of the accounts. One of the final notes to the accounts may give you details of the company’s owners (see section 2.6).

If it is a subsidiary of a larger group of companies, the accounts will often tell you both the immediate owner of the company and the ‘ultimate’ owner of the group.

PERSONS OF SIGNIFICANT CONTROL

Another way to find the identities of the people ultimately responsible for a company’s actions is to find out who it has registered as Persons of Significant Control (PSC). These are people who ultimately own more than 25% of the company’s shares or voting rights over those shares. Even if you own a company through a string of subsidiaries, you should still be declared a PSC, as ultimately you are responsible for its actions.

Since 2016 all companies have been required to declare their PSCs to Companies House annually. To find a PSC, go to the the ‘People’ tab on a company’s page, then click on ‘Persons with Significant Control’.

The stated aim of the PSC regulations was to combat money laundering and tax evasion by the use of shell companies. However there are various loopholes – the beneficiaries of trusts do not have to declare themselves, for example – and many companies do not appear to be disclosing their PSCs in the way that was expected.

CONFIRMATION STATEMENT AND ANNUAL RETURN

If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the accounts, try the company’s most recent Confirmation Statement, which all companies are required to submit to Companies House every year. This should contain details of the company’s PSCs (those who own over 25% of the company’s shares) and any changes of shareholding of any level since the last Confirmation Statement.

If there have been no changes of shareholdings recently and you want to see the full list of shareholders – including those who own 25% or less – you will need to find the last Annual Return the company submitted. These were replaced by Confirmation Statements in 2016. The Statement of Capital at the back of the annual return listed all the shareholders of a limited company and showed how many shares they each own.

If the company is part of a group the listed owner will be the immediate parent company within the group, rather than the ultimate parent company or shareholders. In this case, you’ll have to get the annual return of that company, then the one that owns it, and so on. See section 2.3 to understand company ownership.

The annual returns of publicly-listed companies (PLCs) do not contain shareholder details. You have to order a DVD-ROM for a list, which is updated every three years. However, since the requirements changed in 2009, PLCs have only had to disclose the details of shareholders who have more than five percent of the company’s shares. This has made it very hard to find out details of all the shareholders of publicly-listed companies. Try the annual report, which may list the top ten. If there’s nothing there try one of the online databases listed here (central public libraries and university accounts often have subscriptions to Orbis or Fame).

SHARE REGISTER

The document you really want is the company’s Share Register, which lists all the current shareholders. You can ask the company or its registrar (the company that administers the register) for a copy, but you have to have a ‘proper purpose’ for doing so and it’s a legal offence to lie when describing why you need it. If you pass the proper purpose test, you’ll have to pay to get a copy – more than £100 if it’s a big multinational – or you can go down to the registrar’s office to have a look at the register in person, although non-shareholders also have to pay for this. You can see it for free if you’re a shareholder (though you’ll still have to pay to get your own copy) but only if you do the proper purpose test.

For more information, see the briefing on this by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators, available online. See section 3.5 for corporate databases that contain full lists of shareholders from publicly-quoted companies.

REGULATORY DISCLOSURES

The UK government’s National Storage Mechanism (NSM) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE) require disclosure of any major purchases or sales of (UK) share holdings (usually three percent or more). You can piece together a broad picture of a publicly-listed company’s shareholders by trawling through the NSM and the market news section of the LSE website.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS

Given that so-called institutional investors – banks, insurance companies, pension and other investment firms that pool the money of thousands of different investors – now own a significant amount of UK company shares (see section 2.5), you could see if they have invested in the company you’re interested in. If you want to find out what a particular pension or investment fund owns, go to the website of the company or organisation that is managing the fund and look for the accounts or investment portfolios of the particular fund you are looking for. How many of their investments they disclose will depend on the fund. If you can’t find the details on their website, try a web search for the exact name of the fund in full, as sometimes business websites will give summaries of their investments. You could also try calling them up and asking if there is a list you could see. If you are looking at a fund for particular employees – for example a local government employees’ pension fund – you could ask the employees to ask for you, if you can get in touch with them. Contacting their union might be a good place to start.

FOLLOWING THE CHAIN …

As companies can themselves be owned by other companies, you may need to look through the ownership details of a chain of companies before you get to the ultimate owners of the company (see section 2.3). This information may be in the company’s accounts (see section 2.6) so check them first.

But things get difficult if people are investing through ‘shell’ companies to deliberately hide their identity. Companies or individuals can invest through another company they own, so that the name of the company shows up on the official documents instead of their names. The shell companies they are investing through often only exist ‘on paper’ and are mostly registered in countries or states with minimal disclosure requirements, meaning you can’t see their annual return or the documents you need to find out who owns them.

People can also use trusts to hide their identity (see section 2.2). For trusts, it may only be the name of the trustee – often a lawyer – that shows up in the trust’s names and details.

Nominee companies – mostly formed by a bank or another investment manager to hold and administer shares or other assets on behalf of the owner – can also play a similar role.

There is often no way round this. According to the Economist magazine: “the trail has gone cold in many a criminal probe because law enforcers were unable to pierce a shell’s corporate veil”. But try searching for the exact name of one of these companies on the web or in the business databases listed in section 3.5. It’s a long shot, but you could also ask the company they are investing in to see if they’ll tell you. Again, corporate databases can often help to find details of their ‘beneficial’ ownership (i.e. who is eventually receiving the money that is going through them). At the time of writing the government is considering forcing UK-registered companies to disclose their beneficial owners for public scrutiny, though time will tell how much more transparent things actually become.

RETURNS TO OWNERS

Find out how much the owners of a company are receiving in dividends from the accounts (see section 2.6). To find out how much they have received in total dividends, you’ll need to add up the figures from the accounts of each year they owned the company.

You can find how much owners of private limited companies bought and then sold a company for from the accounts from the relevant years, usually in the directors’ report at the front. It is more difficult for publicly-listed companies, but if you know when investors bought and sold shares, you can cross-reference this with the share prices on the relevant days from the London Stock Exchange’s website.

DIRECTORS

If you can’t find details of the directors on a company’s website or in its annual report, its annual return lists a company’s secretary and directors (see above for more on the annual return). Companies update details of changes of directors with Companies House as and when they occur. Since October 2009 directors have not been required to give their home address, and so most just give their company’s. However, if the director has been serving since before then, and hasn’t changed address, you can just go to a previous annual return to find their address.

You can also try searching the Electoral Register or a people-finder website like People Tracer. The latter two also have details of any county court cases they have been involved in. To find out if a director has any history of bankruptcy, contact the Insolvency Service, part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, or use the free search function on their website. More and more company directors and senior staff are now on social media sites like Linkedin, which sometimes include contact details and a bit more background.

You can search Companies House for details of disqualified directors. You can also search by current and former directors, to see any other directorships they currently hold or have previously held – very useful for mapping corporate links. Some of the free online databases listed in section 3.5 allow you to search for directors, and much of the information contained in the annual report and other Companies House documents.

DIRECTORS’ PAY

The annual accounts will usually contain some details of directors’ pay – at least how much the highest paid director is getting (see section 2.6). The ‘related party transactions’ note, towards the back of most accounts, will detail any other financial transactions between directors and the company (see here). The annual reports of bigger companies – and especially those that publicly list their shares – will often provide a more comprehensive breakdown of their directors’ ‘remuneration’, including salary, bonuses and pension contributions. They will often give details of their directors’ employment history, including political and civil service positions held.

COMPANIES HOUSE

Every UK company is required to file its accounts, annual return, and any change of name, director, address and other details, every year at Companies House, the state registry body. These documents are publicly available from the Companies House offices in Cardiff or London, or from the Companies House website. The website holds accounts since 1975 from all current and dissolved companies. For information prior to that, you’ll have to phone up and make a special request. Companies House will send you a copy of all the archived documents they have on DVD. This costs £20 per company and takes a few working days to turn around.

When you’re searching Companies House, make sure you’ve got the name of the company exactly right. If it’s part of a group, there may be other companies with very similar names. If in doubt, check the company number, which doesn’t change when a company changes its name. Remember that Companies House is only a registry body. It doesn’t check the documents filed to see if they have been completed correctly or if they are accurate. This can allow companies to get away with not publishing all the information they are supposed to and may mean you see some mistakes in the accounts. If you say “according to figures filed at Companies House” before quoting figures then it’s not your fault if they’re wrong (as long as you quote them accurately!).

Every country has it’s own equivalent of Companies House. A web search for something like ‘company register’ and the name of the country should bring up the one you’re looking for.

Several free online databases are springing up that present summaries of company accounts and annual returns (see section 3.5) but it’s worth getting the originals from Companies House to check the figures are correct.

The post Sources of information: Companies appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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A Freedom of Information (FOI) request can uncover information that those in power would rather was kept secret.

Although the regulations do not, for the most part, extend to the private sector, being able to get hold of contracts between government departments and companies, statistics, performance data, emails or details of meetings between ministers and company representatives can reveal behind-the-scenes lobbying, revolving doors between the public and private sectors, compromised planning or policy-making processes and the performance of companies running public services.

What follows is only intended to be an introduction. The Campaign for Freedom of Information has produced a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide, available to download from their website. There is lots of information on the Access Info Europe human rights organisation’s website, and Your Right to Know, a book by the journalist Heather Brooke, last published in 2006, remains a very useful resource. The Information Commissioner’s Office also produces their own guide to using the FOI regulations.

THE LEGISLATION

The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 2000 and fully implemented in 2005, established a ‘right to know’ legal process through which anyone can make a request to a public authority or government department. That authority must then disclose the information or provide valid reasons under the Act for refusal. The earliest such provision was passed in Sweden in 1766 and today ninety-five countries have passed some form of Freedom of Information legislation.

If the information required relates to the environment or to an authority providing a public service it will be covered by the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs), which also came into force in 2005. The EIRs are a product of a European Union directive and tend to grant a stronger right of access than the FOI acts.

The FOI Act applies to all UK government departments, Parliament, the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies, and all public authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This includes local councils, NHS bodies (hospitals, trusts, doctors’ surgeries etc), police, armed forces, regulators, quangos, the BBC, advisory committees, museums and publicly-owned companies. It does not cover courts and tribunals, or the security and intelligence services. There is a full list of public bodies on the gov.uk website.

The EIRs also cover private companies providing environmental services, consulting or research for public bodies.

The Freedom of Information Act (Scotland) 2002 applies to the Scottish Executive, Scottish public authorities and the Scottish Parliament, and, while broadly similar to the UK act, it offers some increased access to information.

The Acts are enforced by the UK Information Commissioner and the Scottish Information Commissioner.

WHAT INFORMATION CAN I ASK FOR?

The Act covers any recorded information held by a public body, regardless of who created it or when. This can include paper records, emails, information stored on a computer, videos, maps, photographs, audio recordings and handwritten notes. Information which is known to officials but not recorded is not covered. You can also ask for information which may not be contained in one document. This means you can ask specific questions about a topic, or for information to be extracted from a database, rather than relying on the documents that the authority already holds.

The Act requires every public sector organisation to have a publication scheme that describes the types of information it publishes, or intends to publish, along with any charges it applies. These schemes should be available on the authority’s website and you can also request a hard copy. They must have been approved by the Information Commissioner and are legally binding. If an authority refuses to publish information specified in its publication scheme you can ask the Information Commissioner to take enforcement action.

Before writing a request, check what documents the authority has already published in case what you are looking for has already been made available. Usually, the best place to look is the authority’s website. You can also contact the member of staff responsible for FOI. Disclosures from all government departments are currently listed on the gov.uk website. The whatdotheyknow website allows you to browse all requests made through the site, and the responses.

MAKING AN FOI REQUEST

An FOI request must be made in writing, either by email, a letter or a fax. You must provide your name and an address where you can be contacted (which can be that of the organisation you are writing on behalf or, usually, an email address). A request made anonymously or under an obvious pseudonym is likely to be treated as invalid. You don’t have to be in the UK or a UK citizen to make a request. You can also specify how you want to receive the information: for example, in ‘hard copy’ (printed), by email or on disk.

The structure is simple. Just write something like:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing under the Freedom of Information Act to request…

then describe what you want, ending with your name and address.

Saying that you are applying under the FOI Act is a good idea, not because the request would be invalid without it, but because it reminds the authority to follow the correct procedure whendealing with the request. If your request is for both environmental and non-environmental information, cite both the FOI and the EIR acts. Some people also like to remind the authority of its various duties under the regulations.

The Act is ‘applicant blind’ which means that the identity or motive of the individual requester should not be taken into account when deciding whether to disclose information (unless the request is deemed to be ‘vexatious’). There is therefore no need to state your reasons for your request: the test is whether the information can be made public, not whether it can be disclosed to you as an individual.

Other key points to remember when drafting a request include:

o Don’t include any personal opinions, complaints or anger in your request.

o Don’t bombard them with questions.

o Design your request to sidestep exemptions in advance (see below).

o Keep your request separate from any other correspondence with the authority.

o Keep copies and a detailed log of all correspondence related to your request.

The request will be valid as long as it is sent to the correct authority – it is not your responsibility to find the correct individual but it’s sensible to send it to the authority’s FOI officer, if they have one.

You can also send the request to the person who deals with the issue in question if you know who that is, or to the relevant minister, chief executive or press officer (if you are a journalist). Some authorities will have an online request form, though remember to make your own copy of the request if you use this. It’s also possible to make a request via the whatdotheyknow website, in which case the request and the results will be published online.

If you’re not sure about your request you can ask the authority you are writing to for advice. They are obliged by law to provide reasonable advice and assistance to anyone wishing to make a request for information. This can include help ascertaining what information is recorded by the authority or what they have already published, as well as assistance in framing the request in the most effective way and advising if there are likely to be any exemption problems. The authority should also provide assistance if you have a disability that means you are unable to write a request.

Authorities should not take any longer than 20 working days to provide the information you asked for, or explain their reasons for withholding it. Under the UK FOI Act, authorities are permitted to extend the normal 20 working day period by another 20 working days if the request is especially complicated or long. Some may cite lack of staff time as a reason for a delay. Requests under the Scottish FOI Act and EIRs must be dealt with within 20 and 40 working days respectively, with no other permitted extensions.

Sometimes, authorities will try to drag the process out, making extension after extension. If this drags on for months, it may be time to consult the Information Commissioner, or at least threaten to.

If your request is denied, you have the right to be told why. If disclosure was deemed to be against the ‘public interest’ then the reasons should be given.

In most circumstances you should be told whether the authority holds the information you are requesting. However, if the request would not have been disclosed in any circumstances – for example if it related to court records or the security services – then the authority is unlikely to reveal whether or not it holds the requested information.

COST LIMITS

Among the most common ways for a body to reject a request is by claiming it would cost too much to find and deliver the information, so you need to make yours as specific and unambiguous as possible. Requests to the Ministry of Defence for “everything you hold related to BAE Systems” are easily rejected, for example.

For a government department, the cost limit is £600, equivalent to three and a half days work at a fixed rate of £25 per hour. For all other public authorities the limit is £450. Authorities may only use the costs of locating, retrieving, extracting the information, putting it into any special form that you requested and redacting (obscuring) any exempt information. They may not include the time taken to decide whether or not they have to disclose the information.

If you know the documents you want, for example minutes of a particular meeting, a specific report or a set of figures, then describe them as precisely as you can. Alternatively, you can make a request for a particular type of record produced over a specific time period, such as correspondence or emails between the authority and another party over a given period. For example, a request for all correspondence between the Department for Work and Pensions and Atos Healthcare is probably going to get rejected. A request for all correspondence between the Minister of State for Disabled People and Atos Healthcare between January and June 2013 stands more of a chance.

You can ask for more than one thing, as long as it doesn’t exceed the cost limit. You could, for example, also ask for minutes of any meetings that occurred between the minister and Atos for the specified time period.

If you send in lots of separate requests on the same subject, the authority may aggregate them into one request if they are made within 60-working days of each other, and then use the cost-limit to refuse the request. Requests may also be aggregated if, in addition to being made within 60 working days of each other, they are made ‘in concert’ (i.e. if the requester’s name is different but the authority believe the requests originate from the same individual or organisation).

Under the Scottish FOI Act, the authority must answer each request separately.

If you’re told you’re exceeding the cost limit just make another request for less information. You can also ask the authority’s advice on how to narrow your request to within the cost-limit so that you receive at least some of the information you requested.

Cost limits work differently under the EIRs, under which the authority may issue you with a ‘reasonable’ charge for information that exceeds the cost limits (which are set at the same level as under the FOI act).

EXEMPTIONS

The FOI regulations are also riddled with exemptions that authorities can cite as reasons for not disclosing information. However, they are not always deployed correctly and require careful scrutiny to ensure you are not being denied information you are entitled to.

The authority must show why the information is exempt, and that the public interest in not disclosing is greater than the public interest in doing so. Do not simply accept the authority’s use of an exemption without checking the legislation yourself first.

It is worth remembering that if the public interest in disclosure and the public interest in withholding are judged to be equal, then the authority must disclose the information. Similarly, if there is little public interest in either withholding or disclosing the information, then the authority must disclose it.

The list of exemptions to which the Public Interest test applies to is long. For a full list see the legislation on the Ministry of Justice’s website.

COMMERCIAL INTERESTS AND CONFIDENTIALITY

The most relevant exemption for getting information about companies is probably section 43 of the act, which sets out an exemption from the right to know if:

“the information requested is a trade secret, or release of the information is likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person.” (A person may be an individual, a company, the public authority itself or any other legal entity.)

The Information Commissioner’s guidance expands on this, saying “a commercial interest relates to a person’s ability to participate competitively in a commercial activity, i.e. the purchase and sale of goods or services. The underlying motive for these transactions is likely to be profit”.

This is a frequently cited reason to deny information relating to companies but the exemption is still subject to the public interest test so it can be worth appealing – explaining why the public interest in disclosure outweighs any ‘harm’ caused.

To make things more difficult, the commercial interests exemption very often overlaps with section 41, which sets out an exemption from the right to know where the information requested was provided to the public authority in confidence. Companies are fond of commercial confidentiality clauses when signing contracts and these can be hard to get around.

In deciding whether the disclosure of a particular piece of information would be harmful or beneficial to the public, a great deal of judgement is exercised bypublic authorities’ information officers. The dominance of market ideology and a culture of secrecy mean that the emphasis is often on protecting short-term commercial interests at the expense of transparency and accountability.

The important thing to bear in mind if you receive a refusal claiming commercial confidentiality is that the authority must be able to prove that the information being refused would really must have a prejudicial effect on of the company involved if disclosed. The test must rest on the content of the document in question, not its type (tenders, contracts etc).

Another important point to recall is that the commercial interests exemption does not necessarily compel the authority to refuse the whole document, but rather to redact the sensitive information in it so you can’t see it. A public authority may disclose a contract with a company, but redact details of financial returns, for example. The right to know under EIRs is stronger for this and many other exemptions. For instance, they do not allow for commercial confidentiality to trump the public right to access information about emissions.

PUBLIC POLICY

Other exemptions that may be of particular interest to anyone looking into the relationship between companies and governments are those that cover the formulation of public policy. They are phrased to include everything relating to the process, not just advice. It is very rarely adjudicated in the public interest to disclose information prior to the decision being taken, so you might be better off making your request after the policy has been formulated. The two main concepts hindering disclosure are:

1. ‘Safe space’ i.e. preserving an environment in which policy-makers can make decisions without being distracted by criticism or public pressure.

2. ‘Chilling effect’ i.e. ensuring that policy-makers are able to conduct and record their policy-making free from fear of future disclosure of its details.

These two factors will diminish over time, especially if there has been a change of government in that time.

More positively, following a request by Friends of the Earth, the Information Tribunal adjudicated that there is no expectation of privacy for senior government officials or lobbyists meeting each other or their attributed comments, declaring:

“there is a strong public interest in understanding how lobbyists, particularly those given privileged access, are attempting to influence government so that other supporting or counterbalancing views can be put to government to help … make best policy”.

Decisions made on exemptions are all collected online and the Information Commissioner’s Office has detailed guidance on all the exemptions.

APPEALING

A negative reply should also inform you of what to do to appeal the decision and how long you have to do so. You will usually first appeal to the authority itself, requesting an internal review.

Explain as clearly as you can why you think the authority was wrong to reject your request and cite any supporting legislation, previous cases and decisions made by the Information Commissioner. The onus in not on you to prove the authority’s wrongdoing, but for the authority to prove that it has complied with the law.

You can also request a review if you are not happy with how your original request was handled or if you think the authority does hold information it claimed not to in the original reply (minutes of meetings whose existence were denied have miraculously been found after an internal review, for example). If the authority again rejects the request, you can appeal to the Information Commissioner. Again, be as clear and specific as you can about why you think the authority is wrong, making the public interest case for disclosure, and including copies of your request, the initial appeal and any other correspondence and emails with the authority. Remember to check the Commissioner’s website for specific advice on making requests.

If the Commissioner upholds your request they will issue the authority with a notice requiring it to disclose the information to you, or to do whatever else is deemed necessary to comply. If the authority disobeys this notice they can be held to be in contempt of court and in theory, may face a fine or even imprisonment. If you’re not satisfied with the Commissioner’s decision, you can appeal to the Information Tribunal (as can the authority). The tribunal can then be challenged in the High Court but only on a point of law. Controversially, both UK and Scottish ministers have a veto which allows them to overrule certain decisions made by the Information Commissioner. The use of this veto must not be secret and may be judicially reviewed.

FUTURE CHANGES TO THE FOI ACT

Governments tend not to be too fond of FOI regulations. New Labour seemed to regret passing the FOI Act very soon after they’d passed it – Tony Blair wrote in his memoirs that he “quakes at the imbecility” of it.

At the time of writing, the Coalition Government is seeking to restrict the right to information provided by the FOI Act by making it easier for authorities torefuse requests on cost grounds. all who use the FOI Act and limit its reach.

The Campaign for Freedom of Information are campaigning against these changes. Contact them for more details.

CASE STUDY: MILITARY LICENSES

It can sometimes take a long time to get the information you’re looking for. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) spent a year and a half trying to get information out of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) about which companies had applied for licences to export military equipment, and what the destination countries were.

They started by asking for the names of companies that had applied for licences to repressive regimes like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, requesting information on some of the most controversial weapons categories which included tear gas and sniper rifles. They eventually got BIS to disclose all companies that had applied for arms licences to any country in 2010 – i.e. just before the brutal suppression of many of the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. This information was enough to allow anti-arms trade groups to go to companies based in their local areas with solid proof that they had intended to sell military equipment to a particular country, and put pressure on them to stop doing so. The request below has paved the way for further requests for information for other years, and has allowed CAAT to better piece together the details of the UK companies profiting from wars and repression around the world.

Dear BIS

I would like to request a list of the names of all companies that applied for licences for the export of equipment with Military List ratings during 2010. I would like the companies to be listed by destination country.

I anticipate that the simplest format for the list would be a spreadsheet with just two columns – one for company name and one for destination country.

Yours

xxxx , CAAT

The post Freedom of information appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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Companies get a lot of work from the World Bank and its affiliates such as the International Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Investment and Guarantee Agency and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, both through direct procurement and their notoriously pro-business policies.

Their websites and printed publications also have a great deal of information on what companies are up to around the world. Don’t get bogged down in their analysis and prescriptions however – their default ‘solution’ for ‘developing’ countries remains to bring in more companies and corporate investment.

The London-based NGO the Bretton Woods Project keeps a critical eye on the activities of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Other international institutions include:

REGIONAL MULTILATERAL DEVELOPMENT BANKS

The websites of institutions such as the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Inter-American Development Bank have similar regional information, with the same caveats.

WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION (WTO)

Records the various international trade agreements it brokers, as it follows its mission to make the world as corporate-friendly as possible.

UN BODIES

Of United Nations bodies, those particularly relevant for anyone doing corporate research are the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

EU BODIES

The European Union and European Investment Bank websites produce lots of research, facts and statistics about companies active in Europe. Again, any analysis on these sites should be read very critically.

The websites of many of the organisations above also contain databases of statistics that may be useful for research. If you’re looking into the scale of corporate power for example, you may want to compare a country’s GDP to a company’s revenue.If you’re researching a mining company, you may want to find out about a country’s mineral exports, or if you’re investigating banks, you may be interested in data relating to the size of the financial sector as a proportion of a country’s economy, or the amount of state aid they receive.

The post Sources: International institutions appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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Central government, local councils and other public bodies together pay more than £220bn a year to companies for a variety of goods and services, including office stationary and furniture supply, computer upgrades, road building, weapons supply, management consultancy, and the provision of public services such as healthcare, education or welfare provision.

The legal framework for government procurement and details of other regulations can be found through the Cabinet Office. Details of the procurement policies of councils or other public bodies can usually be found on their websites, or by contacting them directly.

The Treasury website contains a range of details of government spending across departments, including spreadsheets bringing together details of Private Finance Initiative projects, for example.

Many public sector organisations keep lists of approved suppliers for certain types of work, particularly low-value contracts. If you can’t find it on their website, contact the government department, council or other public body concerned to find out if they keep one and how you can have a look at it.

All contracts with public bodies are subject to the Freedom of Information Act so information provided by the suppliers in their tenders must be disclosed to anyone who asks for it, unless it’s exempt (for example, if it’s a trade secret) or would cost too much to retrieve. Companies can also request a non-disclosure agreement if any of the information in their tender is commercially confidential (see section 3.10 for more details and how to make an FOI request). When you get a contract, you may find it’s been heavily ‘redacted’, and key details of, for example, the revenue the company can make from it has been blacked out. If you can’t successfully challenge this using FOI rules, try the accounts of the company and the public body to get the information you’re looking for.

Companies’ accounts often break down their sources of revenue, allowing you to ascertain how much they are making from the public sector. You can often find how much hospital trusts are paying for Private Finance Initiative contracts by looking in the liabilities and finance costs sections of their accounts, for example (see section 2.6).

Other sources containing details of public sector contracts include:

CONTRACTS FINDER

At the time of writing, the government’s new Contracts Finder website includes contracts worth £10,000 and above from UK central government departments and public bodies, such as libraries, museums, and regulatory and advisory bodies. Many local authorities place their notices on Contracts Finder, and more plan to do so in future.

Contracts Finder lists contracts that have been signed since October 2010, plus contracts that are currently being tendered and those ‘in the pipeline’, giving you a chance to challenge them before they have been signed. You can also find out which companies currently have contracts with the government and what services they are providing. For contracts that have already been awarded, Contracts Finder will usually contain details of who it was awarded to, its value, how the supplier was selected, whether the supplier will subcontract any of the work and a copy of the contract itself.

It’s free but you have to register for certain services. If you can’t find anything on Contracts Finder, contact the relevant public body or check their website to find out what they are buying.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own public sector procurement websites:

o Sell2Wales

o Public Contracts Scotland

o eSourcing NI

SUPPLY2HEALTH

The Supply2Health website has details of the contracts that NHS bodies are giving out to outsource and privatise their services. The NHS Supply Chain website has details of NHS procurement for general goods and services.

GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT SERVICE

Executive agency of the Cabinet Office created by the coalition government to “save money for the public sector by improving supplier management”. Also responsible for agreeing centralised contracts for government departments.

OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION (OJEU)

Official gazette of record for the European Union. Public sector buyers have to place an advertisement in the OJEU if a new contract is worth more than a certain amount. This is currently just over £113,000 for supplies and services with central government.

TENDERS ELECTRONIC DAILY (TED)

Online version of the OJEU. All of the UK contracts on TED are automatically listed on Contracts Finder so you might not need it for UK research, but it’s useful for other EU countries.

GOVERNMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Industry trade journal for companies interested in “government procurement opportunities” in the UK and globally.

PPP FORUM

Industry body for UK infrastructure public-private partnerships.

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT FINANCE ASSOCIATION

Not-for-profit association dedicated to promoting and representing the interests of private companies and public sector organisations in project finance and public-private partnerships throughout the world

PROJECT FINANCE INTERNATIONAL

International trade journal run by ThomsonReuters. Published every two weeks in print, and updated daily online. Free online trial available.

SMALL BUSINESS RESEARCH INITIATIVE (SBRI)

Provides funding for new projects that “connect” the public sector with “innovative ideas from industry”.

ENTERPRISE EUROPE NETWORK

EU body that says it “helps small business to make the most of the European marketplace”. Information held on the site includes contact details of more than 600 “business support” organisations, many of which are UK-based.

CONSTRUCTIONLINE

Public-private partnership between Capita and the Department for Business Innovation & Skills publishing details of construction contracts offered by public bodies. Costs from £90 per year to register though.

CRITICAL SOURCES

For critical research and analysis of privatisation projects across the UK, Europe and globally, see the Public Services International Research Unit, based at the University of Greenwich, and the European Services Strategy Unit, based in Kerry. Both produce in-depth, analytical reports on the effects of privatisation on public services.

The Centre for Public Services, which has now become the ESSU, published an Investigator’s Handbook in 2003, for looking into companies, organisations, government and individuals.

The post Sources: Public procurement and privatisation appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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There’s a list of all central government departments, agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and links to their websites and contact details, on the gov.uk website. It contain news updates, descriptions of the body’s work and career details of ministers and senior civil servants – very useful for tracing corporate trails.

The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments have their own websites detailing their departments and agencies, as do local authorities.

If the information you’re looking for hasn’t been made public, try making a Freedom of Information request (see section 3.10).

If you’re investigating the dealings between a company and a public body, try talking to the public sector staff. You may be able to get useful information or leads by speaking to the employees of a hospital department angry at its planned privatisation, for example. Go down to the site and try to speak to people there, or get contacts through the trade union.

There are often contact details for the civil servant responsible for a particular piece of work at the bottom of government publications, so you can give them a call or send them an email to ask them about it. The worst they can do is refuse to talk to you, and you’d be surprised how much some civil servants are willing to talk about their work.

You can also ask your MP to ask a parliamentary question of the relevant minister.

Non-ministerial departments and other public bodies that may be especially useful for company research include:

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE

Responsible for granting patent and trademark rights in the United Kingdom. You can search by company, patent or trademark name. Also check the EU Trademark Office.

LAND REGISTRY

Records and registers the ownership of land and property in England and Wales. Keeps and maintains the Land Register, where more than 23 million titles – the evidence of ownership – are documented. Each title costs £3 to download from the website.

OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING

UK’s consumer and competition authority. Holds information on credit licences granted to companies and publishes investigations into various market sectors.

COMPETITION COMMISSION

Conducts in-depth investigations into mergers and different industry areas and markets. Check the Competition Appeal Tribunal for details of cases involving competition or economic regulatory issues.

UK TRADE & INVESTMENT

Helps UK companies get work in international markets. Good source of information for deals in various industries and for details of government’s role helping companies set them up.

SERIOUS FRAUD OFFICE

Investigates and prosecutes fraud, bribery and corruption. Criticised for being too weak but provides details of cases and good for leads.

HMRC

UK’s tax authority. Comes in for a lot of stick for letting multinationals off the hook but its website contains useful briefings on a range of tax and general corporate issues.

NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE

UK public auditor. Audits central government accounts and, even if you may not agree with their conclusions, its reports are full of detail on the spending of public money in a variety of sectors.

OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS

Responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The official archive of the UK government, based in Kew, Surrey. Entrance is free and you don’t need to book. You can look through telegrams, minutes of meetings, policy documents and a host of other records going back 1,000 years. You can search for records related to a particular company. Only around five per cent of The National Archives’ records have so far been digitised, but this is increasing.

REGULATIONS AND LEGISLATION

You can find the full texts of all past and present UK legislation on the legislation.gov.uk website, part of the National Archives. Check the websites of solicitors’ firms or legal associations for explanatory briefings or articles to help understand particular pieces of legislation.

To find legal cases involving a particular company, use the British and Irish Legal Information Institute’s website for details and judgements of UK and European court cases. See section 2.1 for information on the laws companies are set up under, and their legal structure.

Regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive, Food Standards Agency, Financial Conduct Authority, Office of Rail Regulation, Environment Agency, Ofgem and Ofwat produce lots of statistics and information about the sectors and companies they are regulating.

Their websites hold the full texts of the various regulations that companies in a particular sector or industry have to abide by, in addition to links to the relevant pieces of UK or EU law. They also publish the full texts of the licences that companies are granted to do a certain type of business, allowing you to see whether companies are sticking to the terms and conditions of the licence, and their duties under them.

The exact names and responsibilities of UK regulators are often changing so contact the Department of Business, Information and Skills for a comprehensive and up-to-date list, or check the Focus on Enforcement part of its website. The Wikipedia website also has a long list.

PARLIAMENT

Use Hansard – the official report of parliamentary proceedings – to find out what’s going on in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Reports of the latest proceedings are published on the parliament.uk website and updated during the day.

The text of Daily Debates in the Commons and Lords are published online the following morning by 6am and is available in hard copy. You can find lots of detail here, with many parliamentary questions leading to new disclosures by the government of its relationship with companies, so it’s well worth taking a bit of time to search around.

Registers of Members’ Financial Interests let you keep tabs on which parliamentarians are making money on the side from corporate ‘engagements’. Both houses of parliament publish and update their registers regularly and these are available in print or from the parliament.uk website. Councils and other public authorities publish similar documents.

The Electoral Commission is the elections watchdog and regulator of party and election finance. Their website holds easily accessible details of donations and loans made to all political parties, and their statements of accounts. Companies’ accounts also have details of this (see page 55).

Parliamentary Select Committees produce reports that – while you might not agree with their analysis – often include useful facts and examples. Look in the appendices to see all the evidence submitted – there are usually many details and opinions that do not make it into the main body of the report.

You can watch most committees’ sessions on the parliament.uk website, which also contains transcripts (published in print through Hansard).

Run by mySociety, a project of registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy, the theyworkforyou website keeps tabs on MPs and peers. It contains information on their voting records, participation in debates and committees, and their register of interests. You can also make Freedom of Information requests through the site (see section 3.10).

Equivalent information about your local council and councillors is available from their websites or by contacting the council office.

CASE STUDY: As the coalition government’s Health Bill passed through parliament, Social Investigations combed through the registers of Members’ Interests and found over 200 MPs and peers had recent past or present financial links to companies or individuals involved in healthcare. Many of these companies have gone on to win contracts made possible by the legislation and healthcare campaigners have used the research to show the influence private companies have over the ‘reforms’ process.

The post Sources: Government and Parliament appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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Trade Associations are funded and founded by businesses from a particular sector to organise networking, representation, PR, lobbying and advertising activities. Professional institutes are usually not-for-profit bodies that represent the interests of a sector.

These organisations often have information services, which you can phone up to ask for statistics, market data or other information. However, they will generally charge you if you need more of their time than just speaking on the phone. You can also ask them for advice on how to do your research, or for pointers to good websites, directories, journals and libraries.

The following publications and websites can help you find the trade association or professional institute for the industry you’re tracking:

TRADE ASSOCIATION FORUM

CONFEDERATION OF BRITISH INDUSTRY

UNITED KINGDOM PROFESSIONAL BODIES AND TRADE ASSOCIATIONS

DIRECTORY OF BRITISH ASSOCIATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS IN IRELAND

GATEWAY TO ASSOCIATIONS (US)

International directories are inevitably less comprehensive, but try:

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ASSOCIATIONS

WORLD GUIDE TO TRADE ASSOCIATIONS

DIRECTORY OF EUROPEAN INDUSTRY AND TRADE ASSOCIATIONS

The Wikipedia website has a list of international professional associations.

Two paywalled corporate online databases – EBSCO Business Source Corporate Plus and Nexis – provide access to thousands of trade journals and other information sources. EBSCO offers a free trial and it is possible to access Nexis with some Athens academic accounts.

TRADE JOURNALS AND MAGAZINES

The best bit of trade journals tends to be the news section, though there may occasionally be some informative feature articles. It may be worth flicking through the last year or two’s back issues. Trade journals often have an index in the first issue of the year, covering the previous year, or one is inserted when old editions are bound.

There is a huge range of trade journals and magazines, in a huge variety of industries. Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory is a good place to start. First published in 1932 and founded by the chief of the periodicals division of the New York Public Library, it is kept in the reference section of some libraries and is also available online. The full directory is paywalled but a free trial period is offered.

Call the London-based Periodical Publishers’ Association or the relevant trade or professional association for the industry you’re interested in and ask what they recommend. The media section of the Guardian newspaper’s website also has a page on trade magazines. Some of the bigger trade journals are listed below. All are in print and their websites are paywalled, unless specified otherwise.

BUILDING

Some free news on the site.

CONSTRUCTION NEWS

Introductory ‘stubs’ of the articles on the web and free e-mail updates. Also offers a free trial.

MINING JOURNAL

Stubs of the articles on the web and free e-mail updates.

MINING MONTHLY

Stubs of the articles on the web and free e-mail updates. Also offers a free trial.

MINING

Web only. Free to access.

THE ENGINEER

Covers a range of engineering sectors from transport to nuclear power and the arms trade. Website is free to access.

JANE’S DEFENCE

Produces defence review, plus journals on fighting ships, aircraft, mines, missiles etc. Lots of free online content and offers occasional free trials to the magazine.

PROCESS ENGINEERING

Lots of free online content and free e-newsletter.

FARMERS WEEKLY

Free news on the site and free e-newsletter.

THE GROCER

Stubs of the articles on the web and free e-mail updates. Also offers some free trials.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Some free content on web and offers free trials.

CAMPAIGN WEEKLY

Information on the advertising industry. Lots of free online content.

HEALTH INVESTOR

Limited number of articles for free on the site. Free trial offered.

EDUCATION INVESTOR

Limited number of articles for free on the site. Free trial offered.

FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL

News on the civil and military aviation industries. Free articles and archive on the site.

AVIATION WEEKLY

News on the civil and military aviation industries. Stubs of articles on website. Some free trial subscriptions.

OIL AND GAS JOURNAL

Some free content on site and offers free e-newsletter.

THE BANKER

Free online access with registration.

INTELLIGENCE ONLINE

Security/intelligence industry research. Some options for ‘free’ subscriptions.

DIRECTOR

Published by Institute of Directors, claims to reflect the “real issues and interests” of their members. Free access to most online content.

You could also contact some of the main publishers of trade journals to ask them if they produce any relevant titles, or look at their websites:

REED BUSINESS INFORMATION

Provides several web-based data services and owns a variety of titles spanning several sectors including FlightGlobal, Farmers Weekly and Estates Gazette. Also organises conferences and events.

EMAP

Large range of titles covering retail, construction, healthcare, local government, architecture, jewellery and ‘opportunities’ for business in the Middle East. Also organises corporate events.

HAYMARKET PUBLISHING

Publishes titles on PR, marketing, the automotive industry, the army, wind power, waste and healthcare, plus web resources and on-line forums.

WILLIAM REED BUSINESS MEDIA

Publications and websites on food and drink, including hospitality, meat, grocery and alcohol industries, plus cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Organises expos, award ceremonies and events. Runs some free listings.

THE HEMMING GROUP

Publishes magazines on transport, highways and engineering, surveyors, builders, retail and local government. Organises expos, conferences and award ceremonies on the same sectors.

INFORMA

British company which sells databases of information on various sectors including the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare, telecoms and media as well as publishing books and journals. Owns Taylor and Francism which includes the publishing imprints of Routledge. Organises a range of corporate events including the Monaco Yacht Show and the Adam Smith Conferences.

Other corporate events organisers include:

FT LIVE

Part of the Financial Times. Organises a conferences including on banking and finance and telecommunications.

UBM

British company organising corporate events globally

CLARION EVENTS

London-based organiser of corporate events including DSEI, one of the world’s largest arms fairs. Sells lists of attendees at their events to corporate marketing executives.

The post Sources: Industry bodies appeared first on Corporate Watch.

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Providing news, analysis and information on companies and the market is itself a very profitable market. If you are following a particular company or industry, you can get lots of useful information from business sources that you won’t find in usual news sources, such as details of a company’s ownership and financing, its business model and plans for the future.

Don’t forget though that their target audience is business people who are more interested in a company’s revenue and profitability than the social and environmental effects of its operations (unless, of course, they affect its profitability!). When we use these sources at Corporate Watch, we’re usually more interested in the facts they contain, rather than their analysis or estimations. Some of it may be useful – with analyses of companies’ financial positions often revealing what a company’s PR would prefer to ignore – but don’t assume all that you read from these organisations is correct. The generally positive analysis of banks published by the majority of corporate analysts just before the financial crisis is just one example of the lack of objectivity often provided by corporate analysis sources.

Remember that corporate websites store information about you by using cookies (see section 1.6). Sites which offer free registration or free trial subscriptions are harvesting email and postal addresses to use in future marketing.

SPECIALIST BUSINESS MEDIA

As well as news and market updates, most of these outlets provide company profiles, financial information such as turnover and profit, number of employees, names of directors, areas of business, share price and so on.

The Financial Times remains the best way to keep up with developments in the corporate world, its preoccupations and peccadilloes. You can only read a limited amount of content for free online.

Other useful business newspapers, broadcasters and websites include Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, International Business Times, Forbes and the MorningStar and efinancialnews websites.

ONLINE DATABASES

OpenCorporates is a freely-accessible site listing companies from around the world including their filings with Companies House and equivalent registry bodies in other countries. It pulls data from various other government departments so is good for keeping tabs on public sector contracts won by companies or regulatory licences they have been granted.

The DueDil and Company Check websites both contain freely accessible summaries of millions of company accounts and other details registered with Companies House. DueDil has a corporate structure mapping feature that can be very useful for visualising a company’s subsidiaries, parents and the overall corporate group it is part of.

The London Stock Exchange website has brief profiles on the companies listed on it and provides latest market news and updates, with lots of information on share trading, both present and historical. It shows significant changes in share holdings, which can be used to identify major shareholders in a company. You can also find details or share transactions through the National Storage Mechanism, which is administed by MorningStar.

The rest of the databases below are very expensive to access, but they contain information that it is hard to get anywhere else. Some have details of publicly-listed company shareholders that you can’t get through Companies House or free business websites, for example. However, most offer a free trial, which often allows you to access a decent amount of content for a limited period. They’ll only give these out to people they think are likely to pay for the full service though and will usually phone you to discuss what you want to use them for.

You can access some, such as Orbis or Fame, at bigger public libraries or copyright or business libraries (see section 1.3). If you’re a student – or know one – you may be able to use Athens or other academic logins. Industry bodies like the Institute of Directors give their members access to a lot of the websites below and most corporate media groups will also subscribe to them.

ORBIS and FAME

Orbis covers 120 million companies worldwide and includes comprehensive lists of shareholders, corporate structures and lots of other very useful information. Fame is limited to UK and Irish companies.

Bureau Van Dyke, its Belgium-based owner, also produces the Fame and Amadeus databases that specialise in companies in the UK and Ireland and Europe respectively. The Zephyr database describes itself as “the most comprehensive database of deal information”. Updated hourly, it contains information on mergers and acquisitions, stock market listings, private equity and venture capital deals and rumours.

FACTSET

Information on the ownership of publicly-listed companies worldwide. Claims to hold details of stocks held by 28,000 institutions, 41,000 funds, and more than 400,000 insiders and stakeholders from over 120 countries with daily updates and history from 1999. Also provides analysis of UK share registers.

MORNINGSTAR COMPANY INTELLIGENCE

Claims to provide detailed information on more than 500,000 private companies including in-depth biographical facts on more than 42,000 active and former directors and officers including their hobbies, interests, direct connections, and remuneration; financial data from annual reports and company announcements; the latest regulatory news; and company key dates and ratios. Contains the old Directory of Directors publication. No relation of the left-wing newspaper!

THOMSON ONE BANKER

Designed to “provide bankers, private equity and venture capital professionals, lawyers, consultants and academics with market news and quotes, plus comprehensive reference data to monitor changing market conditions and to gain important insight into a company, industry or event.”

Another Thomson Reuters’ site, LoanConnector, lets you track loan and bond transactions around the world. Includes the DealScan service.

LEXISNEXIS DOSSIER

Part of the Reed Elsevier corporate group, online database designed for legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. Claims to have information on 80 million companies, 80 million business executives and 1,000 industries.

GRAYDON

“Credit information” company that provides credit reports on more than four million UK companies through its website. Could be useful if you think the company you are looking at is having financial troubles.

IMPORT GENIUS

International shipping online database based in the US and the Virgin Islands. Can be useful for tracking the movement of goods around the world.

ONESOURCE

Now predominantly online, OneSource provides information on businesses, industry and executives to “make business professionals more effective and productive in completing their critical daily tasks”.

DIRECTORIES

Bigger public libraries will usually have the print versions of at least one or two of the directories below. Most are now accessible online but are very expensive. Many directories start with a guide to using them – reading this guide can save a lot of time. And don’t forget the Yellow Pages and the Phone Book still do the trick for most office contact details.

WHO OWNS WHOM

Tells you how more than 7.5 million companies worldwide are legally structured and shows their corporate family trees. The various volumes give details of a parent company and its subsidiaries.

D&B BUSINESS REGISTERS

List all UK businesses with five employees or more, or turnover of more than £250,000, alphabetically by county and town. Also include details of head office and branch information, names of directors, partners or proprietors, turnover, profit and loss, number of employees, net worth and company registration number. Entries are further cross-referenced by industry.

KOMPASS

Provides business information to be used by companies for sales, marketing, research and purchasing. Covers over 60 countries worldwide. For each site listed for a company, it gives broad ranges within which turnover, profit, number of employees fall. Sometimes this refers to the whole company and sometimes just to that specific site. Also tells you the precise(ish) products and services the company supplies.

PENSION FUNDS AND THEIR ADVISERS

Provides financial and contact information for the UK’s major pension funds and details of their advisory firms.

WHO’S WHO

Contains autobiographical information on more than 33,000 currently “influential” people. Not a business information source as such but contains lots of CEOs and business people. Note the entries are autobiographical: the information is requested from and provided by those included so it’s not going to be the most critical. Some public library logins will get you into the online version. Who’s Who in the City does the same as Who’s Who but for the city and also contains personal contact details. Who Was Who goes back to 1897 and includes entries on 90,000 people included in previous editions of Who’s Who.

CRAWFORD’S DIRECTORY

Includes links between major companies, their management and their professional advisers.

IoD BUSINESS DIRECTORY

Maintained by the Institute of Directors, a business trade association and lobby group. Allows you to search businesses across the UK by name or type of business. Free access online, but registration is required.

CREDIT RATING AGENCIES

As well as dolling out their (in)famous credit grades, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch – who together control around 95% of the ratings business – provide lots of information about the companies they are rating, usually for free on their websites, with registration. See section 2.5 for more on credit rating agencies’ role in assessing companies’ finances.

ANALYST REPORTS

Corporate analysts make their money advising investors on whether to buy or sell a company. They generally specialise in one industrial sector and have detailed knowledge of the companies within that sector and their financial performance.

However, unless you know a sympathetic insider you will have to pay a lot of money to get hold of them. Some reports are available on the web for a price, and the Dialog and Bloomberg Professional websites are worth checking out. Both offer a free trial period – or allow you to buy reports on a one-off basis. Brief free reports can be accessed at the Seeking Alpha website. Many banks, private equity, auditing and accountancy firms also publish some free reports from their in-house analysts.

MARKET RESEARCH

Market research firms gather information on markets, business sectors or the public, which is then sold to companies. They produce guides explaining the main trends and issues in a particular market sector and describe the main companies involved.

Major market research firms include Mintel, Nielsen, Ipsos MORI, Datamonitor, Euromonitor, Keynote, Market Strategies International and MarketResearch.com.

Most continue to publish printed reports or briefings and some libraries have market research publications in their business section. Some are published in journal format and then bound so you’ll need to look through the index of the most recent one to find the issue that you need. Most companies publish all their work online, though the more detailed information will usually be paywalled.

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