The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Worst News (July 7)
July 6, 2011 by Douglas A. McIntyre
Nothing compared to the negative press News Corp (NYSE: NWS) has gotten in the last three days as its The News of The World is accused of tapping the phone of a dead girl and erasing messages in a full mailbox to leave room for more.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | News Corp. | NWSA | 52.659 | +585 | One of its UK paper, The News of the World, hacks dead girl’s phone |
| 4 | National Oilwell Varco | NOV | 45.259 | +252 | Buys Ameron International for $772 million |
| 7 | ConocoPhillips | COP | 34.577 | +553 | Oil leaks hurt China output |
| 18 | KeyCorp | KEY | 25.337 | +382 | New debt card cap will cost $60 million. |
| 21 | Novartis | NVS | 24.63 | +557 | Russian police search its offices |
| 27 | Quest Diagnostics | DGX | 23.777 | +497 | UK competitor say Quest overcharged government by $1 billion |
| 35 | Pfizer | PFE | 22.07 | +462 | Drug Lyrica does well in Japanese tests |
| 38 | eBay | EBAY | 21.805 | +636 | UK Twitter account hit by hackers |
| 42 | Autodesk | ADSK | 21.379 | +508 | Large exposure to EU economic slowdown |
| 43 | Kellogg | K | 21.349 | +367 | More concern and agri-product costs are up |
Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.
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