Together with our press monitoring partner AMMCO, LVT Benelux PR has conducted a research into how Bel20 quoted companies were covered in the Belgian media over 2008. It may not be a surprise that Fortis is the clear winner with 12.092 articles (we have only counted the dominant articles, which are articles that cover the researched companies for at least 70 per cent).

Dexia comes a close second with 9.276 articles in Belgian dailies. International brewery group AB Inbev ranks third with 4.828 articles.

Obviously the credit crunch is responsible for a large part of the wide coverage of Fortis and Dexia, however the top 3 remains unchanged when we only look at the months January to August 2008. Coverage for Fortis has indeed been significant from September onwards, with over 5.000 articles on the company in the last 4 monts of 2008!

The top ten of the Bel20 Publicity Index:

1. Fortis (12.092)
2. Dexia (9.276)
3. AB InBev (4.828)
4. Belgacom (4.058)
5. Bekaert (3.531)
6. Colruyt (2.958)
7. Solvay (2.887)
8. GDF Suez (2.112)
9. UCB (1.995)
10. Umicore (1.988)

More to be found at De Tijd (dutch) and l’Echo (french)