Nov 7 (Reuters) – The New York Times Co has sued AOL Inc to force its Huffington Post online news website to rename a parenting blog with a similar name to its own.

In a lawsuit filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the Times said Huffington Post’s “Parentlode” blog had caused reader confusion with the newspaper’s 3-year-old “Motherlode” blog.

Both blogs have been overseen by Lisa Belkin, who worked for the Times from 1982 to 2011 before joining AOL last month. The new blog started on Oct. 24.

AOL spokeswomen did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy declined to comment. Both companies are based in New York.

The Times said Belkin “clearly intended” to confuse readers into believing her new blog was the same as her old blog, which she called a “virtual koffee klatch” for parenting.

Her first Parentlode blog entry referred to the Motherlode blog and said the name change in part reflected reader concerns that Motherlode does not fit “in an era when fathers are every bit the parent.” She also said the old name does not fit a blog that “regularly champions equality, and new paradigms.”

By Jonathan Stempel and Christopher Doering

(Reuters) – Jon Corzine, one of Wall Street’s best-known stars, stepped down as MF Global Holdings Ltd’s chairman and chief executive after his bets on European debt drove the futures brokerage into bankruptcy.

The departure was announced on Friday, hours before conflicting reports surfaced about the whereabouts of $633 million of missing customer money, whose disappearance derailed MF Global’s effort this week to quickly sell a variety of assets.

JPMorgan Chase & Co said late on Friday it had no information about whether balances in MF Global accounts at the bank contained any of the missing customer funds. It also declined to disclose the balances of those funds.

“The accounts and their balances have been and continue to be wholly transparent to MF Global and the recently appointed (brokerage) trustee,” JPMorgan said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, Bloomberg News had said customer funds had been found in a JPMorgan custodial account holding $658.8 million, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.

Corzine, a former chief of Goldman Sachs & Co, characterized his abrupt departure from a company he once joked as “too small to care about” as “difficult” but voluntary.

Nov 4 (Reuters) – Union Bank, part of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc , agreed to pay $35 million to settle the first class-action lawsuit arising from nationwide litigation accusing lenders of charging excessive overdraft fees.

The litigation consolidates lawsuits filed against more than two dozen U.S., Canadian and European lenders such as JPMorgan Chase & Co , Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo & Co .

It accuses lenders of routinely processing transactions from largest to smallest rather than in chronological order. This can cause account balances to fall more quickly, and overdraft fees, typically $25 or $35, to pile up faster.

A notice of the Union Bank settlement was filed on Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Miami. The settlement requires approval by U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King, who oversees the litigation.

King granted class certification in the Union Bank case in July. That meant that customers, estimated in the tens of thousands, could sue the San Francisco-based bank as a group.

Union Bank spokesman Daniel Weidman declined to comment.

Last year, the Federal Reserve barred banks from charging overdraft fees on electronic and debit card transactions without advance customer approval.

Nov 4 (Reuters) – Jon Corzine has resigned as MF Global Holdings Ltd’s chairman and chief executive, four days after the futures brokerage filed for bankruptcy protection, culminating a rapid downfall for one of Wall Street’s best-known executives.

Corzine, 64, had run Goldman Sachs & Co from 1994 to early 1999, and was later a U.S. senator from New Jersey and governor of that state.

MF Global, a company that Corzine joined in March 2010 and had once joked was viewed as “too small to care about,” had been his ticket back to Wall Street.

Corzine’s departure came after MF Global’s $6.3 billion bet on sovereign debt from Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain scared away clients, counterparties and investors.

The New York-based company’s decline accelerated last week after it revealed more details about this exposure, posted a larger-than-expected quarterly loss, and was downgraded by major credit rating agencies to “junk” status.

U.S. regulators, meanwhile, are conducting a broad review of the company’s business as they try to track down more than $600 million of missing customer money.

It is unclear how Corzine’s resignation might affect the various investigations. Neither MF Global nor Corzine has been accused of wrongdoing.

Nov 3 (Reuters) – A federal judge ordered Morgan Stanley to defend against a lawsuit by Singapore investors that accused it of selling them risky debt that was designed to fail.

U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand rejected Morgan Stanley’s bid to dismiss claims by 18 investors that the bank committed fraud and showed bad faith in the 2006 and 2007 sale of notes $154.7 million of notes issued by Cayman Islands-registered Pinnacle Performance Ltd.

He said Morgan Stanley was not shielded from the lawsuit by warnings in the offering materials that the notes could lose value, and even fall to zero, as the investors said they did.

“Defendants point to generalized warnings cautioning investors not to rely solely on the offering materials,” the Manhattan judge wrote on Monday. “But even a sophisticated investor armed with a bevy of accountants, financial advisors, and lawyers could not have known that Morgan Stanley would select inherently risky underlying assets and short them.”

Sand dismissed several other claims.

Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Mary Claire Delaney declined to comment. Daniel Hume, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said he was pleased with the decision.

The October 2010 lawsuit seeks class-action status, and is one of many accusing banks of misleading investors into buying seemingly safe securities backed by risky debt, even as other investors or the banks themselves were “shorting” them.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff’s victims could get everything back that they lost, even after several legal setbacks for the trustee pursuing money on their behalf, a lawyer for the trustee said.

Irving Picard, the trustee, has approved $17.3 billion in claims for Madoff investors, and so far has recovered $8.7 billion, the majority from a single settlement.

Although it could take years, his legal team still expects investors who lost all or much of their life savings through Madoff to see big recoveries from banks and other investors that may have aided or benefited improperly from the Ponzi scheme.

“Notwithstanding certain recent court decisions, the trustee remains confident that ultimately he can pursue his causes of action against defendants who acted in bad faith, resulting in recoveries that will hopefully fully satisfy the investors with valid claims,” David Sheehan, lead counsel for Picard, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Still, the bulk of the settlement money is tied up in litigation, and the trustee has paid out just $325 million so far. Many former Madoff customers, moreover, are older, and may not have years to wait for the trustee to recover their money.

Madoff, 73, is serving a 150-year prison term.

Prosecutors estimated his Ponzi scheme at $64.8 billion, reflecting amounts that customers supposedly held at his investment firm on November 30, 2008, eleven days before his arrest. That amount does not reflect actual customer losses, which the trustee estimates at $17.3 billion.

Nov 2 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday threw out a federal agency’s decision to fine CBS Corp television stations $550,000 for airing singer Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast.

A divided 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said that in imposing the fine, the Federal Communications Commission “arbitrarily and capriciously” departed from prior policy that exempted “fleeting” indecency from sanctions.

Bob Corn-Revere, a lawyer for CBS, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. The FCC also did not immediately return a call.

Jackson’s right breast was briefly exposed to almost 90 million TV viewers after the singer Justin Timberlake accidentally ripped off part of her bustier during a halftime show performance. CBS was fined $27,500 for each of the 20 stations that the New York-based company owned.

The 3rd Circuit in 2008 struck down the fine, but that decision was vacated when the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 upheld the FCC policy as rational, in an opinion involving News Corp’s Fox TV stations. It did not decide if the policy is constitutional, and returned the CBS case to the 3rd Circuit.

Writing for a 2-1 majority, 3rd Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell said the FCC had for three decades maintained a “consistent refusal” to treat fleeting nude images as indecent, and that there was no justification to change policy for CBS.

She said FCC regulations governing indecency treat images and words interchangeably, and that “it follows that the Commission’s exception for fleeting material under that regulatory scheme likewise treated images and words alike.”

By Grant McCool and Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – A federal judge threw out most of a $19.9 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co and a $2 billion case against UBS AG by the trustee seeking money for victims of epic swindler Bernard Madoff’s fraud.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan is one of the largest setbacks for the trustee, Irving Picard, who has spent nearly three years liquidating Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

JPMorgan had been Madoff’s main bank for two decades. McMahon’s decision wipes out about $19 billion of Picard’s case against the largest U.S. bank, a person familiar with the matter said.

“The trustee’s theories fail,” McMahon wrote in an opinion released on Tuesday.

She returned what is left of the cases to the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan for further proceedings.

McMahon followed a similar decision in July by her colleague, Jed Rakoff, in a case against HSBC Holdings Plc, in concluding that Picard exceeded his power.

Nov 1 (Reuters) – A federal judge threw out most of a $19.9 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co and a $2 billion case against UBS AG by the trustee seeking money for victims of epic swindler Bernard Madoff’s fraud.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan is one of the largest setbacks for the trustee, Irving Picard, who has spent nearly three years liquidating Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

JPMorgan had been Madoff’s main bank for two decades. McMahon’s decision wipes out about $19 billion of Picard’s case against the largest U.S. bank, a person familiar with the matter said.

“The trustee’s theories fail,” McMahon wrote in an opinion released on Tuesday.

She returned what is left of the cases to the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan for further proceedings.

McMahon followed a similar decision in July by her colleague, Jed Rakoff, in a case against HSBC Holdings Plc , in concluding that Picard exceeded his power.

A spokeswoman for Picard did not immediately respond to a request for comment. JPMorgan said in a statement the bank is pleased with the decision. Torie von Alt, a spokeswoman for Switzerland-based UBS, had no immediate comment.

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – The government sued Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp and two top executives for at least $2.5 billion, accusing the company of fraud for misleading the government into believing its loans qualified for federal insurance, causing losses.

The civil fraud lawsuit seeks triple damages under the federal False Claims Act against Allied, Chief Executive Jim Hodge and Executive Vice President Jeanne Stell.

It contends that the poor quality of Allied mortgages insured by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) caused nearly one in three loans to default, causing more than $834 million of insurance claims.

According to the complaint, Allied profited for years as one of the largest lenders approved by the Federal Housing Administration, which is part of HUD, by “engaging in reckless mortgage lending, flouting the requirements of the FHA mortgage insurance program, and repeatedly lying about its compliance.”

The company was also accused of making many of the loans through hundreds of “shadow” branches that had not received HUD approval and had inadequate quality control.

In addition to the triple damages, the lawsuit seeks civil fines and a permanent ban against making any FHA loans out of shadow branches.