Answer: Melvin J. Gordon is the chairman and CEO of Tootsie Roll Industries Inc., the candy company in Chicago. It makes Tootsie Rolls, Junior Mints, Mason Dots, and Sugar Daddy.
A company filing from March 2004 shows a salary of $999,000, and bonus of $1.6 million. You'll see, though, that he owns the company. So for this sort of owner-executive, salary isn't the main measure. Either way, let's hope he has a good dental plan.
His company bio says he was 84 as of March 2004 (no, no birthdate is given) and gives this info: "Director since 1952; Chairman of the Board since 1962; President of HDI Investment Corp., a family investment company." So that's another trail to follow. His wife, Ellen R. Gordon, then 72, was president and chief operating officer.
How do I find that?A general Web search should tell you what company Mr. Gordon is affiliated with, especially if you use quotation marks to search for his full name as a phrase: "Melvin J. Gordon".
But how to get the company's financial reports. It's hard these days to find a free way to search filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Well, you can search company names on the government site, http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. Follow the links for "Search for company filings" and "Companies and other filings," and then type in the company name.
What if we didn't yet know the name of the company? You can't search the full text of documents there. A great alternative is, or was 10kWizard.com, which offered free passwords for journalists, but those freebies are gone. One alternative I know of now is EdgarIQ.com, though I find its design maddening.
You usually want to look at proxy statements for the bios and compensation and stock options of executives; the SEC calls a proxy statement a form 14; usually you will see a DEF14, for definitive proxy statement; that's a fuller document than a preliminary statement or an addendum.
Once you know the company, you also can get a quick summary from Hoover's; this will link to the company Web page, financial information, and press releases.
Comment: SEC reports can be complicated, but at least the SEC makes all companies fill them out the same way. So you soon learn that 14 means proxy statement, and that you can use the Edit/Find command in your browser to quickly move through a long document to the "summary compensation table," which is the chart showing executive salaries. Note that the SEC has documents only from public companies (such as Tootsie Roll), not from private companies (such as Mars, makers of M&Ms). Only the largest public companies are listed in Hoovers and similar directories.
How do I know this is right? The SEC passes on the documents just as they are filed by the companies. The information might be wrong, but it's what the companies told the SEC. Remember, though, that the SEC filing is a snapshot. Maybe the company has been sold, or an executive has been sacked. For all we know at this point, Mr. Gordon is no longer with us. Best to check these facts with a phone call to the company, or at least to search for his name in Nexis or another clip service, to see if he's been in the papers.
How do I attribute this? Usually we say something like "according to the company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission." It would be good to give a date, too, for the reasons discussed above. We don't mention 10kWizard or FreeEdgar or the other intermediaries. However, information at Hoovers is more troublesome; it gathers facts from many sources, and can't be entirely up to date on the number of employees or even the names of key executives; I would try not to use any information from Hoovers without checking it out in the SEC filings or with the company.
Go on to Question 7
A primer on Web searching is available at https://powerreporting.com/altavista.html.
You can reach Bill Dedman by e-mail at Bill@PowerReporting.com.
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