The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Worst Press (4/29/2011

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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A great deal of the most harsh business press is related to Warren Buffett companies and the Sokol insider trading scandal. The puts Berkshire Hathaway and Lubrizol on the list

Allergan received negative coverage as it lost a $212 Botox damage suit.

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 Sony Corporation SNE 41.156 +4  Press still critical about PlayStation Network hack
2 Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A 39.062 +2  Buffett tries to explain Sokol insider trades
3 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 29.81 -1  Synthes buyout will cost $21.7 billion and does not fix JNJ OTC drug trouble
4 Toyota Motor Corporation TM 26.262 -3  Production still shuttered by quake
5 Bank of America Corp. BAC 25.735 +2  Earnings still rattle investors
6 Community Health Systems CYH 25.396 -3  Buyout of Tenet unpopular
7 American International Group AIG 25.343 +5  NY Fed sells $1.1 billion in AIG mortgage related bonds
8 Massey Energy MEE 25.305 -2  Buyout deal should close soon
9 Rite Aid RAD 23.949 +1  Tiny improvement in April same-store sales
10 CenturyLink CTL 23.166 +55  To buy cloud computer company Savvic
10 CenturyLink CTL 23.166 +55  To buy cloud computer company Savvis for $2.5 billion
12 Constellation Energy CEG 22.631 +227  Exelon to buy company for $7.9 billion and some investors feel cheated
18 Lubrizol LZ 20.431 +56  Buffett insider trading scandal
22 Bristol-Myers Squibb BMY 18.555 +62  Quarterly results underwhelm
24 Allergan AGN 17.968 +228  Loses $212 million Botox suit

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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