Brand Finance issues correction regarding article on BOC brand value

With reference to the Daily FT article by columnist Rohantha Athukorala titled ‘Sri Lanka’s No.1 brand dented by bond scam’ published yesterday, Brand Finance Lanka Managing Director Ruchi Gunewardene has sent the following statement:

I refer to the article titled “Sri Lanka’s No.1 brand dented by bond scam?” authored  by Mr. Rohantha Athukorala which appeared in the Daily FT of 3rd January 2018 quoting data from Brand Finance Lanka. Mr. Athokorala refers to the Brand Finance annual brand league table and attributes the change in value of the BOC brand to the negative publicity generated around the bond scam. For our annual brand league table reports, every year we carry out an independent market research study to ascertain the consumer brand equity. The data that is in our possession does not show any association  between the media publicity related to the bond scam and BOC. Therefore there is no link in the changes in BOC’s brand value with that of the bond scam.  Mr. Athokorala’s conclusions are therefore presumptuous and totally incorrect.

Authors response:

As mentioned in the article the authors objective was to share the best practice that the evaluation of a business performance must not only be on financial criteria like Net Revenue or Profit but on qualitative data like brand value. A case in point is Bank of Ceylon( BOC) the net revenue growing at 17.2% to Rs.154 billion and profits have grown by  43% Rs.24.7 billion in 2016 whilst brand value grew by 9% to Rs.41.4 billion. Strong growth is seen in 2017 too as at end Sept to Rs. 138.3 billion and profit to Rs. 20 billion. Incidentally the brand value has been growing by 59% in 2013, 28% in 2014, 23% in 2015 whilst in 2016 it was 9%. The question is why did brand value decline to -2% in 2017 and how can a company rebuild this. It was an objective analysis. No conclusion was made but only a question asked. Hence the title of the article “ SL’s no1 brand dented by Bond Scam? “.