European Company Financial Information - A Buyer's Guide

Welcome to the weblog of the European Company Financial Information - Buyer's Guide.

The European company financial information market is one of the most important sectors for business information professionals, credit and finance professionals, and researchers but the market is full of similar competing services and tracking down and comparing services can be a costly and time consuming business for buyers of this information.

Now buyers will have access to the information they need to support their buying decisions in one place with the launch of European Company Financial Information (ECFI) - A Buyer’s Guide from IRN Research (in association with Online Consultants International). The ECFI Buyer's Guide will also be a useful source of independent competitor information for suppliers to the business and credit information industries.

The ECFI Buyer's Guide has detailed profiles of 39 company financial information services in Europe and covers pan-European sources plus sources focusing on the UK, France, and Germany. Alongside the profiles are spreadsheets allowing for quick comparisons of services plus an alphabetical index of products, services, and brands. Services included in the initial launch of the ECFI Buyer's Guide are:

Pan-European Providers:
Alacra, Bureau van Dijk, Capital IQ, D&B, European Business Register, Experian, Factiva, Graydon, Hoover’s, LexisNexis, OneSource, Perfect Information, Reuters, Skyminder, Thomson, World Box

UK Providers:
7 Side, Companies House, Creditsafe, Equifax, First Report, Hemscott, ICC, Jordans, Risk Disk, RM Online

French Providers:
BIL/D&B (Altares), Coface Services, Euridile, Infobilan, Infogreffe, Kbis-express, Societe.com

German Providers:
Bundesanzeiger, BÜRGEL, Creditreform, D&B Deutschland, GENIOS, Hoppenstedt

There are also important changes occurring across Europe in the way company information is being collected and accessed which should help users to find relevant data. More documents are being filed electronically and, in specific countries, new legislation is improving company transparency and access to company information. For example, in Germany from 1st January 2007, company data is being collected centrally for the first time and being made generally accessible under a newly created Central Company Register (www.unternehmensregister.de). Also, the annual company financial statements (Jahresabschlüsse) are being collected, stored and published centrally by the electronic Federal Gazette (elektronische Bundesanzeiger) and no longer by local courts.

This weblog has been created to give readers and interested parties an opportunity to help develop the issues in what is one of the fastest changing information markets.

We hope the weblog is useful and we look forward to hearing from you!

Michael Fanning