The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: March 22 Companies With The Most Bad News

Investing

Published: March 22, 2011 10:33 am

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) was swamped with bad press as it was sued by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) over patents on technology used in the Nook e-reader. PG&G has applied to renew licenses to operate two nuclear plants in California. That process is now in jeopardy. BP faced more bad press as future drilling in the North Sea came under scrutiny by the UK government. Bad press about Hartford Finance rose because it does a great deal o f business in China

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	Fannie Mae	FNMAS	58.847	+2	Concerns about viability stay high
2	Freddie Mac	FMCC	58.157	0	Ditto
3	Barnes & Noble	BKS	51.175	+731	IP lawsuit over Nook
4	Hewlett-Packard	HP	50.399	+2	Concerns about new CEO plans
5	International Business Machines	IBM	48.574	-4	Tech stocks hurt by valuations
6	Google	GOOG	44.566	+35	Gmail service blocked in China
7	American International Group	AIG	39.337	+35	Will try to dump weak derivative paper
8	Toyota Motor Corporation	TM	36.822	+2	Manufacturing interruptions in Japan
9	General Motors	GM	36.65	-2	Could face Japan parts shortages
10	Quest Diagnostics	DGX	36.305	-6	Will offer $1.2 billion in new debt
3	Barnes & Noble	BKS	51.175	+731	IP suit
17	BP	BP	29.897	+62	North Sea drilling
21	NRG Energy	NRG	27.671	+92	Nuclear energy exposure
22	Hartford Financial Services	HIG	27.541	+77	Does business in Japan
23	PG&E Corp.	PCG	26.564	+258	Nuclear plant face headwinds

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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