The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: April 1 The Companies With The Most Bad Press

Investing

Published: April 1, 2011 10:41 am

The press pounded on Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) as David Sokol, a key Warren Buffett aide, resigned in shame, causing concerns about governance at the conglomerate. Toyota (NYSE: TM) stayed on the bad press watch list as it continued to have production problems in Japan and said it would raise US prices.

AIG (NYSE: AIG) replaced the head of one of its key insurance units. General Mills (NYSE: GIS) rose on the negative press list because of increasing commodities prices and FDA questions about food dyes.

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	Google	GOOG	75.396	+2	CEO gets good markets from workers
2	Johnson & Johnson	JNJ	67.202	-1	Still going through recalls of OTC products
3	Las Vegas Sands	LVS	41.781	+15	Macau investigation into local operations
4	Wal-Mart Stores	WMT	40.284	-2	Suit with women workers in Supreme Court
5	Toyota Motor Corporation	TM	38.331	+16	Raises US car prices
6	Lennar	LEN	37.029	-1	Concerns about inside trading
7	Microsoft	MSFT	36.694	+73	Steve Ballmer gets low worker ratings
8	Bank of America Corp.	BOA	35.633	-4	Still smarting from Fed dividend rejection
9	BP	BP	34.75	+3	Worries about suits over Deepwater
10	Berkshire Hathaway	BRK.A	31.159	+30	Sokol resigns in shame
5	Toyota Motor Corporation	TM	38.331	+16	Car prices
7	Microsoft	MSFT	36.694	+73	Ballmer
10	Berkshire Hathaway	BRK.A	31.159	+30	Sokol
17	American International Group	AIG	25.904	+25	New division CEO
23	General Mills	GIS	22.584	+44	Higher commodities prices

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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