Respondents say some websites irrelevant, disorganized, cluttered with ads. High-net-worth consumers say Barron's has the most effective business- and financial-news website, according to a survey by the Luxury Institute. The Harvard Business Review came in second and Morningstar was their third choice.

Mixed bag

The other brands rated were Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, CNBC, Drudge Report, the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Fox News, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Money, MSNBC, Smart Money, the Economist, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and Wired.

"Wealthy consumers tell us candidly that many business and financial information websites are ineffective," says Luxury Institute CEO Milton Pedraza. "Many [of them say] financial sites are 'sloppy and disorganized,' 'too cluttered with ads,' and 'cover issues of no concern' to them. Many publishers have brought their twentieth-century habits and practices to a completely new medium without listening to the voice of the high-net-worth consumer."

The online survey was based on a sample of more than 1,600 wealthy U.S. consumers with an average income of $305,000 and an average net worth of $3.2 million.

The Luxury institute is a New York-based market-research company that specializes in the consumer preferences of the wealthy. -FWR

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