Nasdaq should get out of press release, website business
NASDAQ has sparked an uproar among its listed firms and investor relations service providers with a proposal to bundle news releases and website services into its listing fees. We cover the furor over the proposal in a separate story. In this article, I want to address a question posed by at least one company in [...]
Nasdaq gets black eye over fee hike
THE Nasdaq Stock Market has provoked an unprecedented uproar among its listed companies over a proposal to raise its listing fees and force them to pay for investor relations services from firms the exchange owns. In a major embarrassment for the exchange, dozens of investor relations officers, CFOs and other executives have written to the [...]
PR Newswire should give Heineken’s money back
THIS kind of thing shouldn’t happen — and companies need to stand up and start demanding that it stop. I’ve pasted a screenshot below of a news release today by Heineken N.V. inviting investors to listen in on an investor presentation it’s giving in New York. The company has done the right thing for its [...]
The perfect earnings release for 2006
WHY do companies issue full-text earnings releases via newswire services? Except for bloating the bottom lines of the newswires, who actually benefits from this practice? Sun Microsystems Inc.’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz has written to the SEC to ask the same thing. I’ve chimed in with how I think companies could do away with certain types [...]
Websites and blogs should be approved for scheduled disclosures
SUN Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan Schwartz has written to the Securities and Exchange Commission to argue that website postings should be recognized as full and fair disclosure under securities regulations. In essence, he is arguing that by posting material information on its website, a company achieves a level of dissemination equal to or better than that [...]
Nasdaq on collision course with IR vendors
THE Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. appears ready to wrap the cost of investor relations websites and newswire services into its annual listing fees — putting it on a collision course with many of its listed companies’ current service providers. In a filing with the SEC yesterday, the stock exchange said its fees would rise about [...]