November 2015

In March of this year, Apple Inc. was added to the elite, 30-member Dow Jones Industrial Index, and AT&T was unceremoniously removed. In their press release, S&P Dow Jones Indices said “The timing of Apple's addition to the DJIA hinged on two stock splits: Apple's 7:1 last June and Visa's…

Inversion sure is the right word for the Allergan/Pfizer deal.  Because what got the colonists lathered up enough to fight a war against the one global super power at the time was taxation without representation. Somehow that idea got turned on its head, and now one of the largest drug…

Among investors, there’s a premium placed on the selling and presentation skills of the founder or CEO. Investors in private companies know their payday will only occur if the CEO or founder can sell the company or take it public. Investors in public companies want to know the CEO can continuously attract…

Like a lot of people in my business, I have Bloomberg TV and CNBC on all day in my office. I like the ads almost as much as I like the stories. The ads interest me because I can see, or think I can see, the marketing strategy behind it.…

The words investor and public relations roll off the tongue with such ease that it seems yet another confirmation the disciplines share a cozy symbiosis. They don’t. The notion that increased media exposure leads to increased investment rings false for issuers primarily focused on gaining institutional investors. The reason for…

If you are a public company and trying to decide what media you should be focusing on, then the answer is actually very simple: Dow Jones, Reuters and Bloomberg. That’s it. Other earned media exposure, wherever, is not useless in support of an investor relations program, but it represents a very…

In October, two CEOs made me scratch my head.  One in a questioning fashion, the other in an admiring fashion. I admired Frank Bisignano CEO of First Data Corporation (FDC) for striding onto CNBC’s stage perched atop the New York Stock Exchange moments after his company went public. OMG, every lawyer…