The news at a glance

Banks: Regulator sues over Libor claims

More than a dozen major banks are in hot water over alleged manipulation of a benchmark interest rate, said Andrew Harris in Bloomberg.com. The National Credit Union Administration filed suit this week against JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Credit Suisse, and 10 other international lenders. The NCUA says the banks’ manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, “resulted in a loss of income from investments and other assets held by five failed corporate credit unions.” The regulator also sued Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and seven other institutions over the sale of $2.4 billion in mortgage-backed securities to credit unions that later collapsed.

The big banks’ woes don’t stop there, said Devlin Barrett and Robin Sidel in The Wall Street Journal. JPMorgan this week offered to pay about $11 billion “to settle criminal and civil investigations by federal and state prosecutors into its mortgage-backed-securities activities”—after federal prosecutors reportedly rejected a $3 billion offer as “billions of dollars too low for the number of cases involved.” A federal judge also this week rejected an effort by Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, to dismiss a government lawsuit alleging that it lied over as much as a decade about the quality of mortgages it sought to have the government insure.

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Advertising: Fake online reviewers busted

Prosecutors are cracking down on fake online reviews, said Chandni Doulatramani in Reuters.com. New York state’s attorney general said last week that 19 companies had been caught writing bogus reviews on websites including Yelp, Google Local, and Citysearch. “The companies created online profiles and paid as little as $1 per review to freelance writers” as far afield as the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Eastern Europe. The companies—caught through a sting operation after authorities set up a fake yogurt shop in Brooklyn—will pay $350,000 in penalties for violating laws against false advertising.

Stocks: Twitter eyeing NYSE over Nasdaq

Which exchange will land Twitter’s stock listing? asked Jessica Guynn and Andrew Tangel in the Los Angeles Times. “It’s looking more and more like the New York Stock Exchange will win the Tweetstakes.” Twitter is reportedly leaning toward a listing on the NYSE “after technical glitches marred Facebook’s debut” on the Nasdaq. “Nasdaq used to rule the roost for technology listings,” and landing Twitter would be “a major coup for the NYSE, which has established itself as a contender for technology listings after having won over LinkedIn, Pandora, and Workday, among others.”

Food: Shareholders okay Smithfield sale

Smithfield Foods shareholders voted to approve the company’s $4.7 billion sale to a Chinese meat processor, said Christopher Doering in USA Today. “More than 96 percent of the votes, representing 76 percent of shares outstanding, were cast in favor of the purchase by Shuanghui International.” The deal represents the largest acquisition to date of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm. The sale previously raised concerns that U.S. jobs could be lost and food-safety standards compromised.

Hedge funds: SAC Capital seeks settlement

Steve Cohen wants to settle, said Sheelah Kolhatkar in Businessweek.com. Lawyers for Cohen and his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, “reached out to prosecutors in New York” last week in a bid to settle the civil and criminal cases against him and the company. A grand jury indicted SAC Capital on insider-trading charges in July, just after the Securities and Exchange Commission brought a civil proceeding against Cohen. To settle the criminal charges, sources close to the case say, “the current number being discussed is in the neighborhood of $1 billion.”