The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: April 13 The Companies With The Worst News

Investing

Published: April 13, 2011 10:54 am

Cisco news was particularly negative as CEO John Chambers tries to take apart the segments of his company that perform poorly. Concerns about Toyota’s earnings remain high due to parts and production shortages. Community Health Systems hurt by its hostile takeover offer for Tenet.

Level 3’s buyout of Global Crossing raises concerns. Researcher say they have found a way to hack Ebay’s PayPal system.

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	64.814	0	No escape from its OTC drug recall issues
2	Alcoa	AA	51.195	+24	Earnings below what Wall St. hoped. Stock falls
3	Tenet Healthcare	THC	48.869	+584	Battling hostile takeover bid by Community Health Systems
4	Cisco Systems	CSCO	38.384	+235	CEO Chambers fight for jobs as he restructures faltering firm
5	J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	JPM	38.085	+674	Good earnings, bad news?
6	Toyota Motor Corporation	TM	33.409	+25	Cutting production in Europe as parts run low due to Japan earthquake
7	Community Health Systems	CYH	31.593	+395	Potential takeover of Tenet may be at too much of a premium
8	Citigroup	C	29.366	+220	Concern about whether it can match JPMorgan earnings
9	News Corp.	NWSA	28.284	-7	Fall-out from phone tapping fades
10	Level 3 Communications	LVLT	28.01	+223	Buys Global Crossing
3	Tenet Healthcare	THC	48.869	+584	Takeover trouble
5	J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	JPM	38.085	+674	Good earnings
14	LSI	LSI	25.56	+521	Announces new technology which appears to have bombed
15	eBay	EBAY	25.51	+573	Researchers say they can cheat the company’s PayPal system.

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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