This depends on which country you are looking at, and what types of companies. In some cases you will find very little or nothing from published sources, meaning that the only way of gathering detailed information is through primary research.

For many industrialised countries it is relatively easy to obtain financials on a large number of companies. If the company is publicly quoted, then you should be able to find full financial information, as this will be made available to shareholders. However it can often be difficult to find information on private companies. Not always however! In some markets there are legal obligations making some private company accounts, publicly available. These include a variety of countries: most countries in Western Europe as well as Australia, Estonia, Ghana, Malaysia, Singapore, Tanzania and Uganda, for example. Unfortunately there are many countries without any requirements to file company accounts making it difficult to obtain good quality financial information, even using services such as Dun & Bradstreet (http://www.dnb.com).

Within the US, the SEC web-site (http://www.sec.gov) holds public company annual and quarterly reports. However finding private company financials in the US is less simple. Sources such as Dun & Bradstreet and Equifax (http://www.equifax.com) help, but often the best information will come through direct research.

In contrast, it is very easy to find both public and private company information from most Western European countries as the law obligates companies to file some accounts. These include balance sheets, director details and usually profit and loss, and cash-flow statements. There are national differences. Not all company legal forms need to file, and smaller companies may only need to file minimal detail.

In the UK private limited companies (Ltd.), limited liability partnerships (LLP – not common as a legal form) and public companies (plc) are required to file with the UK's company registry - Companies House (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk). Subscribers can download several years’ accounts, and other company information, from the Companies House web-site at a nominal charge (although public company accounts will often be available on the company's own web-site for free). There is also a more limited "pay-as-you-go" service for non-subscribers. Full accounts, including a profit & loss account, a balance sheet, and auditors and directors reports are held for all companies with over 250 employees, over around £11m sales or with a net-worth of greater than about £5m. Below this, companies are allowed to file abbreviated accounts.

In France, all limited (Sarl) and public (SA) companies need to file accounts, deposited at the Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle (INPI –http://www.inpi.fr). INPI has a contract with a commercial company, ORT which maintains its database (http://www.ort.fr). Accounts can be downloaded from the ORT site at the cost of a few euro. However the format is different to UK and US accounts with figures entered onto a standard form, in French. Another potential source for French financial data, with some free information is http://www.societe.com. However without French fluency it may be advisable to spend more, purchasing a translation from companies like Dun & Bradstreet or Skyminder (http://www.skyminder.com), - an excellent source for world-wide company financial information claiming to hold information on 46 million companies globally.

Most other West European countries, have similarly strict filing requirements, and like the UK and France, obtaining information on private companies is simple. (So, Irish information can be obtained from their company register at http://www.cro.ie, Italian companies at http://www.cerved.com, and so on). The key exceptions are Germany and Switzerland. In Germany, there is no central register. Instead there are over 400 Handelsregisters. All German public companies (AG) and private limited companies (GmbH) are required to file annual financial statements at their local Handelsregister. However German accounts were traditionally produced for taxation purposes only and not for the benefit of other interested parties. Further, failure to comply with filing requirements is rarely punished. Accordingly except for publicly quoted companies, few companies actually bother to file accounts. In Switzerland the situation is worse as with the exception of banks, insurance companies and companies traded on the stock exchange, there is no obligation to file any information at all.

There are a number of general sources for (mainly public) financial information. The Companies House web-site links to a number of other company registries around the world. There is also the European Business Register (http://www.ebr.org) linking to the main European company registries, and the subscription based site at http://www.euroinfopool.com which is a central resource for European information. The AWARE Financial Information Sources page provides an extensive list of world-wide company information sites, and includes a list of global stock-exchanges, some of which will include company financial data or direct links to company financial sources for the relevant country. Another good links page for financial information sources is provided by RBA Information Services (http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/finars.htm). This links to a mixture of free and fee sites globally including the excellent public company information web-sites: CAROL (Company Annual Reports Online – http://www.carol.co.uk), Corporate Information (http://www.corporateinformation.com) and Hoovers (http://www.hoovers.com).