Weeeeeel, there are:
Republican Shipping in reindland
Liberty Shipping in liberty
Gateway Shipping in Bretonia
Bowex in Bretonia
Universal in liberty

Navys and Police forces except for liberty with Liberty Police Inc. and Liberty Security Force

I'll have alot more in a day or so

Would BMM and IMG be companies?

All I can remember:

Liberty:
Ageria Tech: They have the monopoly on trade lanes and jump gates
Interspace Commerce: Like a giant insurance company basically
Universal Shipping: Ships stuff, duh
Deep Space Engineering (DSE): Builds stuff like Trade Lanes and also does some mining
Synth Foods: Makes and delivers food across Sirius, much to the annoyance of local farmers

Bretonia:
Gateway Shipping: See Universal
Bowex: See Universal
Bretonia Mining and Manufacturing (BMM): Does all the mining and construction in Bretonia
Planetform: Terraforms planets like California Minor

Kusari:
Samura Industries: Huge Mega-Corp that handles most of the stuff in Kusari
Kishiro Technology: Huge Mega-Corp that handles everything else in Kusari

Rheinland:
Republican Shipping: See Universal
Kruger Minerals: Handles most of the mining in Rheinland
Daumann Heavy Construction: Builds stuff, basically.

Other:
Independent Mining Guild: Mines stuff and ships it to any of the colonies

Thanks for your replies.
Here's what I've been able to piece together:
*Ahem*
When you hit F8 your character's rep shows up and -every- faction/company is listed along with an "attitude barometer". If you click on a faction/company you get a short paragraph describing what they do or their general disposition with respect to the rest of Sirius. There's a total of 48 of them.
From there you can hit the 'print screen' button.
Then Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Freelancer will 'minimize' and give you the system status/restart window as well.
Open your favorite image editor.
Click 'New' and/or 'paste'.
The image in FL will paste to a new pic file that you can edit/copy, etc.
Next: Click on the FL button in the system tray at the bottom of your screen.
FL will come back up and you can 'print screen' the next faction/company or whatever you want to copy.

I use ACDSee which will open its own new folder and put your image into the folder automatically. *Cool*
Then I cropped the images (200+k/image) down to just the description. Now I have all 48 companies/factions that I can reference any time without going in and out of the game.
Hope that helps.

Merry Christmas

You always find what you're looking for.