Kingston University London Library and Learning Services

Fame for company information

Fame is a database of UK and Irish company information. It holds information on 7 million companies: 2 million in detailed format; 200,000 in summary format and 4 million which are no longer active. As well as company financials, Fame has business and company news, peer comparison of companies, credit ratings, financial strength indicators, directors and scanned images of original filings to Companies House. Information is available for up to 10 years. Results can be exported for analysis.

To access Fame sign in to iCat, go to Database List and then F, where Fame is listed. Click on Fame. If requested, choose Institutional Login. From here, choose UK Access Management Federation and select Kingston Uni-versity from the drop-down menu. You may be taken to a Kingston University login screen. If so, use your normal Kingston login.

Searching for a company

Select Company name in Grouped View of Search

Type in a word in the text box. You may prefer to tick Match on whole words only. Click Search and the index of company names matching the text will appear. Tick the company required. Click OK. Click View report. In Report format click either Standard report or Full report or Add/remove sections to display only the information required

A Standard report covers company and financial details, including profit and loss, balance sheet, financial ratios, credit score, directors, subsidiaries and trading addresses.

A Full report covers the Standard report plus SIC trade descriptors, brand names, financial trends, stock data and county court judgments.

To do a peer report and to download original documents

Click Peer report to compare similar companies with the same SIC code. Choose table or chart format

Click Download original documents for items submitted to Companies House

To do a peer analysis of companies

To do a list of companies in an area by number of employees

Other things to know

You can Export data as an Excel spreadsheet

If there is a question mark symbol next to any headings, further help and information is listed

Use the Help tab for Fame help and Quick tour (the latter are videos)

Do a search for a number of companies. Tick Add to my current search

Click Analysis> Peer analysis> Compare companies> New analysis

Tick options required. Next

Click Relative years> Last available year. Next

Click Options and choose format. Finish

Search by Location to pinpoint the area for which you are searching

Number of employees> Number of employees for a company. Enter figures

Tick Use estimates when the value is not available

OK

View list of companies

The information you need will now be displayed in a table. Use the scroll bar if you cannot see all the columns