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Finding company annual reports

Research guide

Updated: 15 Aug 2024 Update History

This page sets out key sources for company annual reports, including services available from the ICAEW Library & Information Service.
For guidance on how to find other kinds of company information, see our general 'Finding company information' research guide.

Online services

Free and pay-as-you-go sources

Third-party directories and aggregators

Official business registers and securities regulatory authorities

In certain jurisdictions, some or all companies are required to file annual reports with the relevant official business registry and/or securities regulatory authority.

Many of these bodies provide access to information from their records via online search portals, though fees may be charged for access to documents. Notable examples include:

Links to the business registries and/or securities regulatory authorities for over 140 other jurisdictions can be found in our in-depth guide to company information sources by jurisdiction:

In addition, annual reports and other documents collected by some business registries and securities regulatory authorities are accessible via OpenCorporates, an amalgamated database of company information drawn from official primary public sources around the world.

Individual corporate websites

Many companies provide some amount of information on their governance, financials, etc. through their own online channels. In some cases, this includes annual reports.

Some companies (such as Verizon) provide access to their annual reports via a 'corporate' or 'investor' section of their main website, whilst others (such as Tesco and M&S) make them available through a dedicated corporate microsite.

Digital archives of historical reports

There are some online repositories which provide access to historical annual reports for US and Canadian companies. These include:

Subscription sources

There are a number of paid subscription-based services which provide online access to annual reports. Note that, in some cases, these services merely duplicate documents which are freely accessible elsewhere (eg, via the relevant business registry).

These include:

Library services

ICAEW members and ACA students visiting Chartered Accountants' Hall can access the FAME database through the computers provided by the ICAEW Library & Information Service, including any reports which are available digitally within the system.

The Library can also remotely supply members and ACA students with reports drawn from FAME.

Further sources

There are a number of libraries in the UK which hold collections of annual reports, mostly in printed form. Four libraries in the UK with significant collections of pre-1995 UK company annual reports are:

In addition, certain libraries in the US hold significant collections of annual reports. The Annual Reports at Academic Business Libraries database brings together records of the corporate annual reports held by a number of academic libraries in the US.

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