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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