Everything is in the name

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" is a popular reference to William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family's rival house of Montague, that is, that he is named "Montague".

But in today’s world, the name does matter a lot. Last week, the name of a UK company, On-line Plc announced that its plans to change its name to On-line Blockchain Plc. Just a mere name change, with no change in business operations led to the stock price soaring 394% on Friday.  Bloomberg reported that this was the biggest one-day gain for the small-cap company since its December 1996 listing. The trading volume that reached 2.9 million shares by early afternoon in London is equal to more than 16 times the entire year’s trading before the last two days.

The new name reflects the change in its investing – more towards blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. The company itself was so alarmed by the price rise that it issued a cautionary note stating that the development of its blockchain product is still at an early stage.