Bailout

BP: Now more evil than Goldman Sachs

By Felix Salmon

There will be rejoicing in the corridors of Goldman Sachs tonight: BP has finally overtaken it in the most-loathed company stakes! Yes, Goldman is still plumbing depths rarely seen in the modern era. But BP, even after putting aside $20 billion and grovelling to the president, continues to implode: it’s now hit a level of -47.6 in the latest BrandIndex poll. That’s not far from Toyota’s low point, which was -52.7 at the end of March, but it’s going to be a much harder fight back for BP than it was for Toyota.

It’s amusing to remember that earlier this year BrandZ put out a piece of glossy research saying that the BP brand was the 34th most valuable brand in the world, worth $17.283 billion. (Love the specificity there.) Is it possible for a brand to have negative value? If so, BP has probably achieved that distinction at this point.

Meanwhile, for those of you keeping count, BrandZ put the value of the Toyota brand at $21.769 billion, post-recall, while the Goldman Sachs brand was worth $9.283 billion, up a whopping 25% from 2009. How quickly these things can change.

Full post as published by Macroprudential on June 23, 2010 (boomark / email).