NEW YORK | Wed May 23, 2012 2:56pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York state's pension fund assets rose 5.96 percent to $150.3 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, not far from the $154 billion peak set in 2007, the state's comptroller said on Wednesday. Despite the improvement, the return remained below the assumed rate of return of 7.5 percent."Over the last three years, the fund has experienced strong gains during a period of economic instability," Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement.In 2009, the value of the pension fund fell to $108.9 billion in the midst of what DiNapoli called the "global economic meltdown".Counties, cities and towns pay into the fund, and DiNapoli told reporters on a telephone conference call that he did ... Continue reading →

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss BOSTON | Wed May 23, 2012 2:39pm EDT BOSTON (Reuters) - Hedge funds turned their backs on Johnson & Johnson and Amazon.com Inc in the last months, kicking the former market darlings into a group where they see stock prices dropping, research from Goldman Sachs shows. Healthcare company Johnson & Johnson, whose share price slipped 3.14 percent through mid-May from January 1, now heads Goldman's newly created list of "50 Very Important Short Positions." Exxon Mobil Corp., Intel Corp, International Business Machines and Amazon.com round out the top five companies that represent the largest short positions in the $2 trillion hedge fund industry.The listing is the newly created counterweight to Goldman's widely followed VIP list which ranks the 50 stocks that matter ... Continue reading →

By Kate Holton LONDON | Wed May 23, 2012 2:25pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - One of Britain's most respected journalists said on Wednesday that former tabloid newspaper editor Piers Morgan showed him how to hack into phones 10 years ago, the latest twist in a scandal that has so far centered on Rupert Murdoch. Morgan, now a CNN talk-show host in the United States, has consistently denied authorizing phone hacking during his time as editor of the Daily Mirror.The criminal practice has damaged Murdoch's reputation, led to the closure of his News of the World newspaper and prompted a judicial inquiry into media standards.On Wednesday, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman told the inquiry that Morgan had boasted to him at a lunch in 2002 about how ... Continue reading →

By Grant McCool NEW YORK | Wed May 23, 2012 3:04pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - The deal that gave Goldman Sachs Group Inc a $5-billion boost from renowned investor Warren Buffet at the height of the 2008 financial crisis was "as top secret as you could get," a leading banker testified on Wednesday at the insider-trading trial of onetime Goldman board member Rajat Gupta. Gupta is accused of tipping Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam about the deal in an illegal breach of his fiduciary duties.Separately, a prosecutor told the judge on Wednesday, during a jury break, that a Goldman managing director, David Loeb, provided Rajaratnam with information about Intel Corp, Apple Inc and Hewlett Packard.Loeb's name also came up Tuesday in evidence to ... Continue reading →

By Dan Levine SAN FRANCISCO | Wed May 23, 2012 2:37pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's Android mobile platform has not infringed Oracle's patents, a California jury decided in a high stakes trial fought by the two Silicon Valley giants over smartphone technology. The verdict was delivered on Wednesday in a San Francisco federal court, and confirmed by a Google spokesman. An Oracle attorney declined to comment on the decision.Because the same jury could not unanimously agree on the copyright allegations earlier in the case, the latest verdict on patents effectively puts an indefinite hold on Oracle's quest for damages. Oracle at one point was seeking roughly $1 billion in damages.The jury found earlier that Oracle had proven copyright infringement for parts of ... Continue reading →

By Rob CoxThe author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Facebook has reminded investors of a simple lesson: Avoid companies whose bosses don’t care about you. From the get-go, Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s not very sociable founder, made clear he had little interest in welcoming public shareholders. That indifference set a tone for his executives, venture capitalists and bankers that arguably contributed to the glaring flaws in Facebook’s initial public offering last week. True, the company’s earlier backers, who were able to unload more than $10 billion of stock at the highest possible price, may consider the deal worthy of high-fives and Cristal. But the combination of a stock already trading well below its offer price, annoyed retail investors ... Continue reading →

By Grant McCool NEW YORK | Wed May 23, 2012 2:02pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - The deal that gave Goldman Sachs Group Inc a $5 billion boost from renowned investor Warren Buffet at the height of the 2008 financial crisis was "as top secret as you could get," a leading banker testified at the insider-trading trial of onetime Goldman board member Rajat Gupta. Former Goldman banker Byron Trott, a long-time Buffett confidant, told a Manhattan federal court jury that it was policy within a tightly-knit group of executives who negotiated such deals "never to talk about confidential information in public, or elevators. It was grounds for being fired."Called to testify by prosecutors on the third day of Gupta's trial, Trott described how the deal ... Continue reading →

By Joseph A. Giannone NEW YORK | Wed May 23, 2012 1:19pm EDT NEW YORK May 23 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley told brokers on Wednesday it is reviewing every Facebook Inc trade and will make price adjustments for retail customers who paid too much during the social network company's debut last week, according to an internal memo. Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter of Facebook's initial public offering on Friday, in the memo also said "many" of the first-day trades have now been processed and are appearing in client accounts. The company did not specify how much it expected to pay in total price adjustments."All orders are currently being reviewed for best execution pricing," the memo, which was obtained by Reuters, said. "We expect there will ... Continue reading →

LILLE, France | Wed May 23, 2012 12:15pm EDT LILLE, France (Reuters) - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn asked a French court on Wednesday to lift a gagging order that prevents him from speaking to the media during a judicial investigation into his links with a suspected prostitution ring. Strauss-Kahn is under investigation in France to establish whether he knew he was dealing with prostitutes and pimps when he attended sex parties in northern France, Paris and Washington in 2010 and 2011 allegedly organized by business acquaintances.He denies knowing that the women at the parties were prostitutes or that there was any violence.Public prosecutors widened the inquiry this week to include a possible gang rape charge after a prostitute told them Strauss-Kahn and friends forced ... Continue reading →