Blackstone’s CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who didn’t take a bonus this year, sounds pretty frustrated with the public market’s attitude to Blackstone’s stock.

A discussion about the firm’s dividend — it is eliminating the fourth quarter but thinks 2009 will be OK — turned into an exercise in thinking aloud tinged with annoyance.

COO Tony James explained succintly on a conference call with analysts how Blackstone’s cashflow meant the dividend looked pretty secure.

Schwarzman added: “Its frustrating being us. Because if we do pay that, with the stock at this kind of dimwitted price — you could say, why even pay the thing, because nobody cares.”

“But from our perspective, the numbers say we ought to be able to do that. We do hope that someone out there appreciates it. It is frustrating.”

Financial public relations firms, who elevated the honing of corporate messages to a highly profitable art form, are having to adapt their businesses and in some cases cut staff as the economic gloom intensifies.

With far fewer deals to publicize and lucrative “retainer” contracts under pressure, companies are cutting costs and are increasingly focusing on work thrown up by the crisis, such as capital-raising, restructuring and repairing tarnished images.”

So what exactly are they up to?

Some recent pr industry blogs and other web postings shine a light on some of the spinmeisters’ latest tactics.

Flacking firm Fishburn Hedges openly boasts about how a big capital-raising by a UK mortgage lender was kept off the front pages by presenting it as “a technical, esoteric story suitable for business sections”.

For former News of the World Editor Phil Hall, who advised former RBS boss Fred Goodwin on his parliamentary testimony a few weeks ago, there’s apparently no such thing as bad publicity.

Even amid the current financial wreckage, financial pr remains a fiercely contested field as shown by the fact that there’s even a dedicated M&A league table for PR advisers.