The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: March 26 The Companies With The Most Bad Press

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Lennar (NYSE: LEN)  received a large amount of bad press after it was disclosed that an outsider had been accused of insider trading in the company’s shares  Alcatel Lucent’s (NYSE: ALU) image was rubbed on concerns about whether client AT&T (NYSE: T) would continue to use its services.

Two companies, Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) each received a large jump in negative press mentions just after they released earnings. As a matter of fact, RIMM shares fell 10%.

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 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 45.22 +15 Lingering concerns about recalls and product quality
2 Lennar LEN 43.067 +166 Insider trading charges brought against outsider
3 Toyota Motor Corporation TM 38.925 +4 Plants in Japan still idle
4 Rite Aid RAD 36.961 +14 Competitor Walgreen gets good buy with drugstore.com
5 Honda Motor Company HMC 36.281 +7 Plant slowdowns due to quake
6 Alcatel Lucent ALU 32.319 +43 Concerns about lost business due to AT&T deal to buy T-Mobile
7 Barnes & Noble BKS 31.527 -5 Decides it cannot find a buyer
8 Bank of America Corp. BOA 31.372 -4 Fed rejects attempts to reinstate dividend
9 Google GOOG 31.011 -8 New version of Android slowed
10 Fannie Mae FNMAS 30.511 -7 Concerns about insolvency
2 Lennar LEN 43.067 +166 Insider trading
6 Alcatel Lucent ALU 32.319 +43 AT&T supply interruption?
17 Research In Motion Limited RIMM 24.724 +718 Awful earnings forecast
18 Oracle ORCL 24.009 +81 Earnings news
24 Best Buy BBY 22.321 +141 Awful earnings

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

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.

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