http://247wallst.com/2010/01/05/the-15-most-hated-companies-in-america/Customers, employees, shareholders, and taxpayers hate large corporations for many reasons. 24/7 Wall St. has looked at many of these issues to choose the 15 most hated companies in America. We evaluated each company based on five criteria. First, employee impressions, using research firm Glassdoor and other services, were reviewed. Second, we considered total return to shareholders from these companies over one-year, two-year and five-year periods, compared to the broad market and other companies within the same sector. Several firms on our list are not public. Third, customer satisfaction numbers and reputation figures were analyzed from a broad array of sources, including Consumer Reports, JD Power, the MSN/Zogby poll, Vanno, and the University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index were examined. Fourth, brand valuation changes were also reviewed based on data from Corebrands, Interbrand, and Brand Z. Finally, the views of taxpayers, Congress and the Administration of these companies were considered where applicable.
24/7 Wall St. analyzed data on hundreds of companies to produce this final 15.
Unfortunately for some of the companies on this list, they are widely despised because of the businesses that they are in. An airline or franchise operation which deals with millions of customers, particularly when its resources are stretched due to the economy, is likely to make a lot of enemies among customers and workers. This puts airlines and firms with a large number of retail outlets at a disadvantage compared with companies with few customers, particularly if those customers are other large businesses. Airlines have also had to cut huge numbers of employees which affects both their relationships with workers and customers who may suffer from cuts in service.
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1. AIG (NYSE:AIG) is the most hated company in America. Taxpayers despise the firm because it received nearly $180 billion in government aid. AIG has fired enough people and operates under such pressure to turn around its operations that employee morale is understandably low. The firm’s brand is worth so little that some of its divisions have aggressively begun to market themselves under names other than AIG. Vanno’s company reputation index puts AIG as No. 5585 among the 6075 firms that it measures. AIG’s market cap lost over 99% of its value during the last two years, virtually wiping out the firm’s equity investors. CEO Robert Benmosche pressed for a rich pay package while his predecessor worked for $1.
2. United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAUA) has been one of the worst performing airline stocks over the last two years, down almost 60%. United ranked last along with US Air (NYSE:LCC) in the 2009 JD Power survey among traditional carriers as it posted poor results for “reservation experience”, “check-in experience”, and “costs and fees.” United also ranked last in a recent University of Michigan Ross School of Business consumer satisfaction survey. Research that 24/7 Wall St. examined revealed that employee work satisfaction was very low.
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