You have to feel some sympathy for UK finance minister George Osborne. Not only is he dealing with a stubbornly weak economy, but his top-secret annual budget presentation to Parliament was spoiled by an errant tweet. The incident was widely covered and featured plenty of hand-wringing and finger-pointing. But it’s amazing this sort of blunder […]
It’s the oldest trick in the PR playbook: get your bad news out on a Friday and leave early for the weekend. Strangely, this practice still holds, even in today’s continuous news environment. Just look at the news today from SAC Capital and J.P. Morgan.
When you’re in the news business, it is wise to stay out of the news yourself. Because when you become the object of attention, competitors will gleefully exploit your missteps on every newspaper, web page and television channel they own. That’s exactly what happened to Matt Lauer, host of NBC’s Today show, when he and […]
I like advertising. I think it’s an important part of an integrated communication strategy. But a little-noticed ad from Santander, the Spanish banking group, is a gem of absurdity.
Did you miss the news about the lawsuit against Anheuser-Bush that claims the beer giant is watering its brews? I did. That is, until I saw the full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times. It shows how advertising can turn a small problem into a bigger one.
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason stepped own after the daily-deals company reported dreadful earnings. Mason, who struggled to reverse heavy losses and a slide in the stock price, admitted he’d made mistakes. But he was right about one thing: how difficult it is for a fast-growing startup to be a public company.
Although it is Wall Street’s biggest deal advisor, Goldman Sachs is not advising on the mammoth $28 billion takeover of Heinz. But the firm is involved in the widening investigation about suspicious options trades that came from a Goldman client account in Zurich just before the deal was announced. Goldman isn’t accused of wrongdoing, but […]
In a week full of high-profile brawling, the fight between Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and the New York Times has captured a lot of attention. It’s got it all – visionary CEO, upstart company, allegations of media bias, a trove of highly detailed data and a passionate audience. As the saga continues to rage, […]
Some institutional shareholders are complaining about Dell’s proposed buy-out, which would see the computer giant disappear from the public equity market behind a $24.4 billion pile of cash. But T. Rowe Price, Southern Asset Management and others think the cash pile isn’t big enough, and they are pressing CEO Michael Dell and his private equity […]
For those who decry the media’s harsh tone and yearn for a bygone age when civility ruled the land, it is useful to look at the 1888 debut edition of The Financial Times, reprinted today to mark the newspaper’s 125th anniversary. There, in a front-page article, the FT skewers its biggest rival to an extent […]