The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: March 3 BP Bonuses

March 3, 2011 by Douglas A. McIntyre

The Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) rose in the negative press index as a government investigation over potential bribe payments threatened it highly success business in Macau. BP moved higher on the list as the bonuses of some of its senior management was disclosed. Note: The Flame Index scans thousands of news sites 24 hours per day and ranks companies getting the most negative press right now. The Flame Index Media Analysis Algorithm crunches the data for an up-to-the-minute ranking of the hardest-hit companies.

The Flame Index started as a research tool in 2008 at the NY Innovation Design Lab (nyidlab). It was used as a general metric to evaluate companies and their risk in the media. Publicly traded Fortune 500 companies are used as a measure to calculate an overall market of negative news and the companies are ranked within that market.

Rank Company Ticker Score Change in Rank Comments
1 Las Vegas Sands LVS 30.876 +1 Investigation into bribery charges
2 Regal Entertainment Group RGC 30.474 +3 Violates child labor laws in the theaters
3 PG&E Corp. PCG 28.383 0 Conflicting reports about whether management knew of dangers prior to gas line explosion.
4 Noble Energy NBL 28.363 -3 Gets permit to drill in the Gulf
5 Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A 27.955 2 Derivatives bond portfolio yields weak returns
6 Goldman Sachs Group GS 27.35 2 Litigation cost for sales of financial instruments could be $3.4 billion
7 Itron ITRI 24.12 10 Restated financial results cause litigation.
8 Citigroup C 23.857 1 Begins sales of consumer unit
9 Fannie Mae FNMAS 23.397 13 Still faces shutdown and losses
10 BP BP 23.292 5 CEO gets no bonus

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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