PRESS DIGEST-New York Times business news - Dec 20

Dec 20 - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* The United States Patent and Trademark Office has dealt a blow to Apple Inc in its legal battle with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd over smartphone patents, declaring that a patent that helped Apple win $1.05 billion in damages against Samsung in a jury trial should not have been granted. ()

* UBS AG announced it would plead guilty to one count of felony wire fraud as part of a broader settlement. ()

* The owner of the venerable New York Stock Exchange is in talks to be acquired by an upstart commodities and derivatives trading platform IntercontinentalExchange, according to people briefed on the matter. The IntercontinentalExchange is expected to offer about $33 a share, with two-thirds of that in stock, one of these people said. ()

* Nearly four years after what became a $49.5 billion bailout, the Treasury Department announced that it would sell 200 million shares back to General Motors Co for $5.5 billion, then sell an additional 300 million shares by early 2014. ()

* Knight Capital Group Inc, the stock market-making firm that nearly collapsed last summer after a $440 million trading glitch, has reached an agreement to merge with Getco, the Chicago-based high-speed trading firm. ()

* On Wednesday, the sale of digital imaging patents was finally announced, but instead of bringing as much as $2.6 billion as Eastman Kodak Co once predicted, the selling price was far short of that amount, at about $525 million. ()

* The Markel Corp, a specialty insurer, said it had agreed to acquire a rival, Alterra Capital Holdings Ltd , for $3.13 billion. ()

* Ally Financial Inc, formerly General Motors Acceptance Corporation, said that it had repaid the last of the debt it had borrowed in response to the financial crisis under a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation program. ()

* American Electric Power Company Inc announced that it would shut its coal-burning boilers at the Big Sandy electric power plant near Louisa, Kentucky, a 1,100-megawatt facility that since the early 1960s has been burning coal that was mined locally. ()

* Lax leadership hampered by "rigid management chains" left the British Broadcasting Corp "completely incapable" of dealing with the sexual abuse crisis that has shaken the network, in the words of an exhaustive report released. ()

* In a move intended to give parents greater control over data collected about their children online, federal regulators broadened longstanding privacy safeguards covering children's mobile apps and websites. ()

View the original article here

PRESS DIGEST-New York Times business news - Dec 19

Dec 19 - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* The Federal Trade Commission is unlikely to finish until January its investigation into whether Google Inc abused its power in the search market, people briefed on the investigation said. ()

* Facebook Inc responded to the anger over the proposed Instagram changes. Kevin Systrom, a co-founder of Instagram, wrote a blog post saying the company would change the new terms of service to make clearer what would happen to users' pictures. ()

* Nielsen Holdings NV said that it had agreed to acquire Arbitron Inc, the radio ratings company, for $1.26 billion. ()

* Penguin, trying to ensure a clean slate before its planned merger with Random House, announced that it was settling a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department over the pricing of e-books. ()

* Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management said that it would immediately sell its controlling stake in Freedom Group, the gun maker that made the rifle used in the Connecticut school shootings. ()

* Jefferies Group Inc said that it earned about $71.6 million in profit for the fourth quarter, up 48 percent from the same time a year ago as its core businesses showed marked improvement. ()

* House Republican leaders struggled to rally their colleagues around a backup measure to ease the sting of a looming fiscal crisis by allowing tax rates to rise only on incomes over $1 million. ()

* The Federal Trade Commission said that it had opened an inquiry into the practices of nine companies that collect and resell or analyze consumer data. ()

* Seven weeks after Hurricane Sandy dumped an estimated 500 million gallons of water in Hoboken, crippling its transportation network and leaving tens of thousands of commuters casting about for alternative modes of travel, officials said that PATH train service was at last set to resume. ()

* Joseph Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York, has informed the Cuomo administration that he is stepping down from his position, according to four people with direct knowledge of his plans. He is expected to resign on Friday, allowing him to pursue a candidacy for New York City mayor as a Republican. ()

View the original article here