Finding company annual reports

• AnnualReports.com
  Free directory of annual reports for listed companies in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
• ResponsibilityReports.com
  Site providing free access to responsibility reports (including sustainability reports, corporate social responsibility reports, and ESG reports) from participating companies in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
• FT Markets Data
  Includes links to annual reports for some companies. Where present, these links can be found on company tearsheet pages, under the ‘Summary’ tab – see the section headed ‘Annual Reports’.
• Public Register Online
  Directory providing online access to annual reports for some US and Canadian companies. Free registration is required.
• African Financials
  Provides links to annual reports for some African stock market listed companies – these can be found under 'Documents & Reports' on company pages.

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:

• Companies House — Find and update company information service (UK)
  Free online search tool allowing one to browse and view records and documents, including annual reports, held by the UK's official company registry.
• Financial Conduct Authority — National Storage Mechanism (UK)
  Online portal from the FCA, providing access to regulated announcements and documents submitted by listed issuers and Primary Information providers (PIPs), including annual reports.
• EDGAR (US)
  Search tool providing free public access to annual reports and other company documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

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:

• Company information sources by jurisdiction (A-Z)

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.

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.

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

• Corporate Reports Online (Penn Libraries)
  A searchable collection of digitised annual reports from US companies, covering the period 1800 to 1955.
• Columbia Historical Corporate Reports
  A digitised selection of corporate annual reports from the Columbia Business Library's extensive collection. Dates range from the 1850s to the early 1960s. Mostly covers corporations that operated in and around New York City.
• Canadian Corporate Annual Reports (Winspear Business Library)
  Digitised collection of annual reports from Canadian companies. The collection has a particular focus on Western Canadian companies.
• Canadian Corporate Reports (McGill Digital Archive)
  A digitised selection of the historical Canadian corporate annual reports held in the McGill University Library collection.

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:

• FAME
  Subscription database from Bureau van Dijk which holds information on companies in the UK and Ireland, including digital versions of annual reports and returns.
• Mergent Online
  Holds over 300,000 annual reports from listed companies around the world, going back around 10 years.
• Mergent Archives — Historical Annual Reports Collection
  A digitised collection of historical annual reports covering over 100 years. Over half of the documents included relate to US and Canadian companies.
• ProQuest Historical Annual Reports
  Digital database containing annual reports from hundreds of top North American companies, going back over 150 years.
• Refinitiv Company Filings Database
  Holds a large number of annual reports, going back to 1968 for the US and 1989 for the rest of the world.
• eol AsiaOne
  Database of information, including annual reports, on companies in Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Coverage extends back to 1984.

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.

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:

• British Library
• Guildhall Library
• Manchester University Library
• Strathclyde University Library

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.