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The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Worst Press (May 31)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Chiquita Brands (NYSE: CQB) was sued for supporting dangerous para-military groups in Columbia in 2007. The EU began what is likely to be a vigorous examination of the Western Digital (NYSE: WDC) takeover of Samsung’s disk drive business.   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 35.86 +4  More concerns that Android does not make money
2 Chiquita Brands International CQB 35.729 +656  Columbia paramilitary payoffs
3 Research In Motion Limited RIMM 34.034 -1  Still being beaten down by Apple
4 Massey Energy MEE 30.687 +3  West Virginia may block M&A
5 General Motors GM 29.789 -2  May auto sales will be weak
6 Western Digital WDC 28.731 +326  EU may stop purchase of Samsung disk unit
7 Hewlett-Packard HPQ 28.166 +6  Management turnover grows
8 Comerica CMA 27.804 -4  Bank gets low rating in new reputation report
9 Pfizer PFE 26.891 +6  About to buy Ferrosan’s consumer healthcare business.
10 Fannie Mae FNM 26.442 -1  Will almost certainly be shuttered
2 Chiquita Brands International CQB 35.729 +656  Trouble with Columbian payments
6 Western Digital WDC 28.731 +326  EU scrutiny of deal
14 Freddie Mac FMCC 25.297 +168  Issues new three-year reference notes
15 BB&T Corp. BBT 23.24 +181 Criticism of bank’s trust preferred securities
21 Exxon Mobil XOM 21.617 +42  Restarts key LA refinery

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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