Is it a public company?

A public or publicly-held company is one that has shares outstanding that are available to be bought and sold by individual investors from the public. Selling of these securities is done via trading on the U.S. stock exchanges which identify a security for trading purposes based on a unique letter ID called a ticker symbol.

"Going public" carries several burdens for a company that was previously operating privately, the most important of which is the burden of disclosure of information.Luckily for researchers, this requirement to file detailed reports of the company with the Securities Exchange Comission (SEC) results in the availability of much data to the general public.

Global Access/Disclosure (EIC)
Locate company financial information including SEC filings, tear sheets, and earnings estimates about U.S. and international companies.

Wall Street Research Net
http://www.executivelibrary.com/Research.asp
Wall Street Research Net has over 500,000 links to company information and 2,000 company home pages.

Wright Research Center
http://www.wrightinvestors.com/ramainnew.htm
Detailed analysis on over 18,000 companies worldwide. Categorizes the companies by country and by industry sector.

Hoover's
http://www.hoovers.com/
Although much of the in-depth Company Profile information in Hoover's is fee-based, company contact information is readily available for about 10000 companies. Most of these are publicly listed, US companies.