It is common practice by marketing professionals in press releases to hyphenate adverbial phrases, such as "wholly owned." Deferring to the The Chicago Manual of Style, adverbial phrases such as this are not hyphenated, even when used preceding a noun. Generally, adverbs in adverbial phrases are words that end in "ly." That's a leading indicator that it is part of an adverbial phrase. However, there are words that end in "ly" that are not adverbs, such as "family" and "early." Thus, it is a "family-owned business" and an "early-released earnings report" but not a "wholly-owned subsdiary" nor "publicly-traded company." A way to differentiate is to consider whether the word that ends in "ly" is a word without it. (Note: This is a series of blog reports about editing styles and rules as applied by Oil and Gas Investor magazine. The styles and rules do not always necessarily suggest using another style nor rule is grammatically incorrect.) Questions? Comments? I’m always glad to hear from you! –Nissa Darbonne, Executive Editor, Oil and Gas Investor, A&D Watch, Oil and Gas Investor This Week, www.OilandGasInvestor.com; ndarbonne@hartenergy.com