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Countries have mandatory disclosure of some financial indicators for certain industries. Some companies may disclose information about their financial performance at will.

While public corporations have to report to the SEC, is there any organized dataset for private companies?

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  • Which locations you are interested in?
    – marfi
    Dec 9, 2017 at 20:40

3 Answers 3

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There is no comprehensive source of open data as you describe, but there are public and restricted-access open data sets that can illuminate certain aspects of private company finances. Privately-held companies often disclose information to the public in accordance with federal, state, and local laws. Some of this information directly involves company finances (such as public bankruptcy records; public property records) and some of it may serve as an indirect indicator of a company's financial circumstances (e.g., the U.S. Department of Labor publishes disclosure forms with rich information on the retirement plans maintained by U.S. employers, including 401(k) plan assets).

Certain sectors of private companies are subject to more comprehensive financial reporting, such as banks (see, e.g., the extensive federal open data on U.S. banks published by the banking regulators). Data.gov's search feature can allow you to explore data available on particular sectors, such as finance.

Depending on the purposes you have, you may also be able to take advantage of restricted-access data sets on individual firms. For example, the U.S. Census provides researchers with access to nonpublic data at a number of Census Research Data Centers (RDCs). Restricted use data includes economic data for business establishments and firms, including:

  • Economic Census
  • Longitudinal Business Database (LBD)
  • Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM)

The list of Census restricted use data sets is available on the Census Center for Economic Studies site.

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Have you seen this project opencorporates?

Probably you will find a lot of data there.

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    Could you please give more than just a link? For instance a data sample, or the kind of data they have. Thanks!
    – Nicolas Raoul ♦
    Dec 4, 2014 at 6:19
  • Searching randomly, no financial indicators, just basic company info: opencorporates.com/companies/be/0889955204 Maybe you can find a better example with more info?
    – Nicolas Raoul ♦
    Dec 4, 2014 at 6:21
  • They do have financials for UK companies, but maybe not US - it depends on the state I think. (Disclaimer: I used to work for opencorporates).
    – Phil
    Jan 23, 2015 at 16:48
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Disclosures in public procurement systems

Private companies disclose their revenues when supply goods and services to the US government.

This is a table of 2014 contracts (850K contracts):

https://app.enigma.io/table/us.gov.government-spending.contracts.2014

(free registration required; an ungated version must be somewhere)

See columns "Vendor Name" and "Annual Revenue".

Perhaps, procurement laws in other countries also oblige such disclosures.

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