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

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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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.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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