The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Worst News (6/30)
Battles with the US government hurt several stocks. Raymond James will pay $300 million for disputes over auction rate securities. Monsanto is under investigation for potential illegal payments to customers. HealthSouth was charged for false Medicare claims. New York City…
Battles with the US government hurt several stocks. Raymond James will pay $300 million for disputes over auction rate securities. Monsanto is under investigation for potential illegal payments to customers. HealthSouth was charged for false Medicare claims. New York City wants $600 million back from SAIC for faulty payroll systems
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Raymond James Financial | RJF | 28.867 | +274 | Settles with SEC for bad behavior with auction rate paper. $300 million hit. |
| 13 | Monsanto | MON | 27.749 | +400 | Big profit, but SEC look at sales incentives for customers |
| 18 | HealthSouth | HLS | 25.784 | +177 | Charged with false Medicare claims |
| 19 | BJ’s Wholesale Club | BJ | 25.514 | +354 | Sold to private parties |
| 21 | Freddie Mac | FRE | 25.128 | +302 | More concern about liquidation |
| 33 | Computer Sciences | CSC | 21.082 | +115 | Legal claims management misrepresented company’s financial situation |
| 34 | Apple | AAPL | 20.571 | +103 | Suit by Samsung over patents |
| 37 | Philip Morris International | PM | 20.147 | +119 | Australians want harsh warnings on cigarette labels |
| 44 | SAIC | SAI | 19.116 | +257 | New York City claims it should get back $600 million for flawed payroll system |
| 47 | Ameren | AEE | 18.731 | +152 | S&P questions value of shares |
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.
