The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Worst Press (6/13)

Investing

Published: June 13, 2011 10:24 am

News that a drought in west Texas could undermine oil and gas production hit Halliburton, Anadarko, and KBR.

Bank of New York Mellon was hit by negative coverage of a problem of how it handled mortgage securities paperwork

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
14	Bank of New York Mellon Corp.	BK	23.544	+125	Government probes role in mortgage securities
18	Fannie Mae	FNM	21.691	+553	Administration considers complete liquidation
22	Halliburton	HAL	20.62	+135	Growing competition from Baker Hughes
25	Comerica	CMA	20.181	+768	Federal Reserve may tighten capital rules
33	Raymond James Financial	RJF	18.726	+651	Another potential victim of Fed rules
36	Anadarko Petroleum	APC	18.533	+446	Drought threatens oil drilling in West Texas
42	KBR	KBR	17.916	+341	More concern about Texas production
43	Lowe’s	LOW	17.874	+645	Home retailer says it may have too many stores to serve weak market
45	Chevron	CVX	17.696	+250	Pulls out of Black Sea drilling venture
49	Valassis Communications	VCI	17.366	+113	Major challenge from Groupon