Family Trees 

The data provided by D&B also contains structural information on companies – the so-called family trees. The family tree shows the parents, subsidiaries, headquarters, and branch offices of a corporate family.

Technical Data

D&B provides a hierarchy file for all vendors and customers included in the BW Export file. This data incorporates all cases of majority share holding. However, majority shareholdings are disregarded

The tree in the hierarchy file comprises the full upward linkage for all vendors and customers included in the BW Import file, that is the complete path within the family tree from the vendor/customer to its Global Ultimate. This path is called the critical path.

The hierarchy file contains a single tree. The root of the entire tree merely serves as a heading for the Global Ultimates. The Global Ultimates themselves are found on the second level of the tree. Each Global Ultimate is the root of a family tree that contains all critical paths of the vendors belonging to that tree.

The family tree also includes subsidiaries as well as branches of any headquarters within the critical path. To distinguish between subsidiaries and branches of a company, all subsidiaries are summarized under a dummy subsidiary node and all branches are summarized under a dummy branch node.

As an option, the hierarchy can be supplied, including subsidiaries and branches but excluding the dummy subsidiary and branch nodes. This gives you no indication as to whether a company is a subsidiary or a branch.