The news at a glance

Madoff scandal: Targeting JPMorgan Chase

Irving Picard, the federal trustee charged with recovering funds for victims of Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme, is reaching into some deep pockets, said Scott Shifrel and James Fanelli in the New York Daily News. Last week a judge unsealed Picard’s $6.4 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, which alleges that “bank bigwigs” were “warned about the scam” but failed to alert Chase customers who had accounts with Madoff; instead the bank withdrew all but $35 million of its own $276 million investment. Picard has made a similar claim against Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, principal owners of the New York Mets. Picard is seeking $1 billion from them, arguing that they knew or should have known that Madoff was running a fraud.

Picard’s suits claim that both Chase and the Mets’ owners weren’t victims of Madoff but accomplices, said Floyd Norris in The New York Times. That’s going to be tough to prove, but Picard has unearthed telling evidence that Chase, at least, was “skeptical about the legitimacy of the Madoff operation.” Wilpon and Katz, on the other hand, seem to have maintained their rock-steady faith in Madoff, even though they shouldn’t have.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Publishing: AOL acquires Huffington Post

AOL, “the elder statesman of online access and digital content,” has acquired HuffingtonPost.com, a “liberal-leaning news site that has been one of the Internet’s start-up success stories,” for $315 million, said Paul Farhi in The Washington Post. The move “greatly expands” AOL’s proprietary content, a key to the company’s strategy now that the days of selling dial-up Internet access are long gone. HuffingtonPost.com founder Arianna Huffington will become editorial director of all of AOL’s content, including MapQuest and Politics Daily, as well as HuffingtonPost.com.

Computer security: Nasdaq system breached

Nasdaq OMX, which operates the Nasdaq stock market, said this week that a hacker had penetrated its computer network, breaking into a service that enables corporate officers and directors to share confidential information online, said Devlin Barrett in The Wall Street Journal. The Nasdaq trading platform, which executes stock trades, was unaffected. Security experts suggest the hackers were looking for corporate secrets they could trade on. In recent years Nasdaq has expanded its corporate services in a bid to develop new revenue streams.

Telecom: Verizon to limit downloads

Verizon, bracing for a potential explosion in data traffic now that it offers a version of the “data-hungry” Apple iPhone, warned customers this week that it would slow data-download speeds for customers who place heavy demands on its network during peak hours—for example, by downloading multiple YouTube videos at 5 p.m., said Matt Hamblen in ComputerWorld.com. “Smartphones consume extraordinary amounts of data that can overburden networks.” Experts predict that other telecom carriers will try to meter data as more smart devices come online, straining already hard-pressed networks.

Deals: Danaher buys medical-supply firm

Danaher Corp., a Washington, D.C., conglomerate with a wide range of defense, medical-technology, and industrial business, is expanding its health-care portfolio, said Tucker Echols in Washington Business Journal. This week it agreed to buy Beckman Coulter, a maker of diagnostic equipment for biomedical companies, for $6.8 billion. The deal is effectively a bet on a continued rise in health-care spending.