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May
7
Last brain dump before I finish the carnival comes from BNET, “CEO Candor on the (Steep) Decline.”
The Takeaway: Rittenhouse Rankings Inc. compiles an annual CEO Candor benchmark survey of 100 Fortune 500 companies, and this year’s results show those at the top of America’s biggest companies are increasingly unable to give a straightforward explanation of what’s going on at their companies:
The survey, which evaluates candor in annual shareholder letters, shows that confusing and misleading statements or “dangerous fog,” increased 66 percent in the survey up from 39 percent five years ago. In contrast, statements that require simple clarification or add useless clutter or “benign fog,” declined to 34 percent, down from 61 percent.
And the listings from Rittenhouse, “Rittenhouse CEO Candor Rankings Sink to Five-Year Low: Truthiness Gains” (I am so not surprised about Humana, News Corp. and Exxon but am a bit surprised by Merrill):
LEAST CANDID:
- Humana
- ServiceMaster
- Boeing
- Estee Lauder
- News Corp.
- Student Loan
- Coca Cola
- Dow Jones
- ExxonMobil
- Merrill Lynch
MOST CANDID (thrilled to see Eaton, Schwab and Sherwin-Williams there - but remember, everything is relative!):
- Eaton
- Entergy
- Wells Fargo
- Novartis
- Target
- Toyota
- Williams Companies
- Sherwin-Williams
- Charles Schwab
- Loews
Sphere: Related ContentBy Jill Miller Zimon at 1:00 pm May 7th, 2008 in Economy, Business, Marketing, Ohio, Cleveland+
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Thanks for dropping by BNET and quoting from Jessica’s article. Her blog, BNET1, will have all sorts of interesting facts that we’re sure will be of interest to your readers in the future.
Also, check out Jon Greer’s follow up post on CEO Cred on his BNET blog, Catching Flack:
http://blogs.bnet.com/pr/?p=211
Michael Mattis
social media manager, BNET