Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This dataset is derived from the annual published accounts of a representative sample of industrial and commercial company groups and independent companies registered in Great Britain. Standardised, aggregated and grossed results from the dataset are published annually in <i>Business Monitor M# Company Finance</i> (HMSO). The factors used for grossing are included within the standard data for each company. The production of this dataset was discontinued in 1990.

Users should note that these data are currently only available in fixed-width ASCII (.dat) format.

Main Topics: Variables Balance sheets, profit and loss accounts and other data in the published accounts of British-registered industrial and commercial company groups and independent companies. The Data Archive can supply the entire dataset if required, but after conversion to an SPSS-like form, the resultant dataset is very large: each of the 3000 company records would contain 8000 bytes of information for each year of the sample. Users may therefore write in for a data request form which enables them to order selected items. Selection may be based on a number of factors including year, type of industry, size of industry, area served (i.e. operates wholly or mainly in the UK or wholly of mainly overseas), nationality of holding company, or particular accountancy data items, such as complete balance sheets, income and appropriation accounts, or a variety of other items which are listed in the data request form.

The representative sample is based on a stratified sample which varies from 1 in 360 for very small companies to 1 in 1 for the top 500 companies. A company's size is determined by the value of its capital employed in the current analysis year. For further information, see `Constructing a sampling frame of industrial and commercial companies', by Clive Lewis, <i>Statistical News</i>, 44, February 1979.

Compilation or synthesis of existing material