WALL STREET

JUDGE DISMISSES LAWSUITS OVER TRADING PRACTICES The New York Stock Exchange was dismissed as a defendant yesterday in three lawsuits accusing seven trading firms and the NYSE of fraudulently costing the nation’s largest public pension funds millions of dollars a year.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet said he relied on reasoning in an earlier securities case in concluding the NYSE was entitled to the same immunity enjoyed by the Securities and Exchange Commission when it was performing duties assigned by the SEC.

Judge Sweet ruled in lawsuits brought on behalf of plaintiffs led by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and Empire Programs, a Saddle River, N.J. corporation. CalPERS is the nation’s largest public employee retirement system with more than $166 billion in assets and nearly 1.4 million beneficiaries.

The lawsuits by CalPERS and other huge public pension funds controlling hundreds of billions of dollars in nine states had alleged that the NYSE deliberately failed to supervise and discipline seven specialist firms. They sought unspecified damages.

The specialists work on the floor of the stock exchange, controlling the purchase and sale of the 2,800 listed companies on the exchange. Judge Sweet permitted the lawsuits to proceed against the specialists.

– Associated Press

IN BRIEF

Microsoft and MCI will let computer users make calls to regular telephones, stepping up competition with Yahoo and Skype Technologies … Mario Monti, who as Europe’s antitrust chief blocked General Electric’s $47 billion merger with Honeywell International four years ago, joined Goldman Sachs Group as an international adviser … A former Pfizer vice president, Peter Rost, who was fired after suing the drugmaker for promoting unauthorized uses for Genotropin, a growth hormone, filed a complaint on Monday against the company alleging wrongful termination … Cendant, the owner of Orbitz and Ebookers, fired the head of its travel services unit after a slump in business, hurting a plan by the chairman, Henry Silverman, to revive the stock price by splitting the company … ConocoPhillips agreed to buy natural gas producer Burlington Resources for $35.6 billion in cash and stock in the industry’s biggest takeover since 2001 … The ex-chairman of Enron, Kenneth Lay, facing trial on fraud charges next month, said ex-finance chief Andrew Fastow and other executives were to blame for the collapse of the company in 2001.

– Bloomberg News