The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Most Bad Press (5/10/2011
Sony (NYSE: SNE) kept the top spot in the Flame Index as concerns about the shutdown of its PS3 network failed to subside. Sony could face $1 billion in liabilities. The Japanese company says the service will not be back…
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Sony (NYSE: SNE) kept the top spot in the Flame Index as concerns about the shutdown of its PS3 network failed to subside. Sony could face $1 billion in liabilities. The Japanese company says the service will not be back online for three weeks. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was a close second as new spread that it bought Skype for $8.5 billion.
H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) was punished because of concerns about it former subprime portfolio. Systemax fired one of its division executives who was involved in a scandal. Quest Diagnostics paid $211 million to settle a suit which claimed it over-billed customers.
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 | Sony Corporation | SNE | 27.981 | +1 | Playstation network still a mess |
| 2 | Microsoft | MSFT | 25.05 | +23 | Buy Skype for $8.5 billlion |
| 3 | Fannie Mae | FNMAS | 23.993 | -2 | Fear about breakup |
| 4 | Bank of America Corp. | BOA | 22.543 | +6 | Large $850 billion portfolio drag |
| 5 | Warner Music Group | WMG | 22.023 | -2 | About to be sold |
| 6 | Community Health Systems | CYH | 20.631 | +122 | Walks away from Tenet deal |
| 7 | Forest Laboratories | FRX | 19.851 | +102 | May face legal action on blood pressure drugs |
| 8 | H&R Block | HRB | 19.612 | +707 | Problems with subprime portfolio |
| 9 | Massey Energy | MEE | 19.176 | +11 | More concerns about mine safety |
| 10 | Boeing | BA | 18.868 | +37 | Will 787 ever fly? |
| 8 | H&R Block | HRB | 19.612 | +707 | Portfolio concerns |
| 14 | Alcatel Lucent | ALU | 17.997 | +172 | Societe Generale downgrades shares |
| 15 | Systemax | SYX | 17.753 | +335 | |
| 17 | Quest Diagnostics | DGX | 17.684 | +674 | legal issues |
| 21 | News Corp | NWSA | 17.44 | +242 | YouTube starts video rental |
Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.