Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Another source for older annual reports (pre-Edgar filings)

Yesterday I helped someone in the library who was looking for Berkshire Hathaway's annual reports from the 1960s. (This was before Warren Buffett's involvement and when Berkshire Hathaway was a textile manufacturer in Massachusetts.) He had been referred to the U of Penn's annual report collection, then to Columbia, and then to us. We have the Disclosure microfiche but the earliest dates were from the late 1970s. I found two annual reports on Thomson Research from 1967 and 1968.
(A Thomson rep explained to me a few years ago that they have a service in which people can request old SEC filings, including requests for annual reports, for a fee. Once someone has requested the filing, the pdf is also added to their database.)

I also learned that the Thomas J. Long Business & Economics Library at the University of California Berkeley has an extensive collection of annual reports, some from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s through 1979 (when Disclosure microfiche began available. The listing is by company and notes the years available. This is a good list to remember.

It turned out that the person I was helping came in on a METRO card. As he was not a student or faculty or staff, I suggested that he follow the information on the Long library's web site and place his request through ILL at his public library.

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