(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and other officials won the dismissal of a shareholder lawsuit accusing them of tolerating poor mortgage practices and quitting a federal bailout program early to boost executive pay.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan said the shareholders failed to show there were “red flags” to put bank directors on notice of “broken controls” in Goldman’s mortgage servicing business, including that workers at its Litton unit may have been “robo-signing” documents.

Pauley also cited a similar lack of red flags to suggest directors knew Goldman was packaging troubled loans in residential mortgage-backed securities, including loans the bank sold “short” in a bet they would lose value.

The judge also said the plaintiffs did not show that directors acted in bad faith in letting Goldman repay $10 billion taken from the Troubled Asset Relief Program early, in June 2009, freeing the bank from restrictions on executive pay.

Pauley said the plaintiffs cannot amend their complaint alleging breaches of fiduciary duties, saying an earlier amended complaint failed to fix defects he had previously identified.

Lead plaintiffs included the Retirement Relief System of the City of Birmingham, Alabama pension fund, as well as Michael Brautigam, an Ohio resident and Goldman shareholder.

Brian Brooks, a partner at Smith, Segura & Raphael representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally did not immediately respond to similar requests.

The case is a derivative lawsuit brought on behalf of Goldman, seeking changes in governance and internal controls, and with any payout going to the Wall Street bank rather than to shareholders.

Pauley said 15 current and former Goldman executives and directors had been named as defendants. Among these were Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar, and former director Rajat Gupta, who was convicted in June of insider trading in a separate case.

Goldman still faces other shareholder litigation. In June, for example, Pauley’s colleague Paul Crotty said shareholders may pursue claims that they lost money after Goldman concealed conflicts of interest in how it put together several collateralized debt obligations transactions.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice said it ended a criminal probe into Goldman activity that predated the financial crisis, while the bank said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ended a civil probe into a sale of $1.3 billion of subprime mortgage debt.

The case is In re: Goldman Sachs Mortgage Servicing Shareholder Derivative Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-04544.

(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Richard Chang)

(Reuters) – Chinese display-advertising provider Focus Media Holding Ltd (FMCN.O) said it received a bid from a consortium that includes its chief executive and private equity firm Carlyle Group that values the company at $3.49 billion.

Shortseller Muddy Waters, which has in the past alleged that Focus Media overstated its assets and overpaid for acquisitions, welcomed the offer, saying the firm was better off in private hands.

The offer of $27 per American depositary share represents a premium of 15.5 percent to Focus Media stock’s Friday close. Shares of the company rose 8 percent to $25.26 on Monday on the Nasdaq, but they were still well short of the bid price.

Shares of several Chinese companies have been hammered in the recent past after allegations of accounting scandals by shortsellers such as Muddy Waters and Citron Research.

“The markets are far better off if a few deep-pocketed investors own Focus Media instead of mutual funds and other public shareholders,” Muddy Waters’s Carson Block told Reuters.

Focus Media has repeatedly denied Muddy Waters’ accusations that the company overstated its assets and overpaid for acquisitions.

The offer for Focus Media is the latest in a string of management-led buyouts of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, as executives look to take advantage of big discounts to peers on the Hong Kong and Chinese stock markets.

Fushi Copperweld Inc (FSIN.O), China TransInfo Technology Corp (CTFO.O) and Winner Medical Group Inc (WWIN.O) have accepted go-private offers from their managements.

Shares of Focus Media, which operates flat-panel display screens in commercial buildings, trade at a multiple of 8.3 times their forward earnings. This is at a deep discount to the stock’s five-year historical average price-to-earnings multiple and the industry average, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.

“Focus Media is under a lot of valuation pressure because of controversies surrounding the company,” T.H. Capital Research analyst Tian Hou told Reuters, adding that a successful deal will help other Chinese companies regain credibility among U.S. investors.

The Focus Media deal triggered a 7 percent jump in shares of New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc (EDU.N), which Muddy Waters has accused of lying about its network and cash balances.

“We think the (Focus Media) stock has been undervalued trading at high single-digit PE when the earnings growth is expected to be above 20-25 percent,” Macquarie Securities analyst Jiong Shao told Reuters.

“Focus Media has a great business, generates tons of cash, pays dividend and buys back its shares.”

DEAL DETAILS

The consortium making the offer for Focus Media also includes CITIC Capital Partners, FountainVest Partners, CDH Investments and China Everbright Ltd.

The company’s board has formed a committee of independent directors to consider the offer.

CEO Jason Nanchun Jiang held about 18 percent of the company’s outstanding shares as of December 31, according to its annual report. He bought $11 million of the company’s ADSs in November.

The transaction will be financed with a combination of debt and equity capital.

The proposal letter dated August 12 said the consortium has been in discussions with Citigroup Global Markets Asia Ltd, Credit Suisse AG and DBS Bank Ltd about financing the debt portion.

The banks have indicated to certain of the consortium members that they are highly confident of their ability to fully underwrite the debt financing, the company said.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore, Additional reporting by Himank Sharma; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

(Reuters) – World stock markets eased on Monday after weak Japanese economic data added to the latest data showing a slowing global economy, while the euro rose as investors exited bearish bets against the common currency.

European shares posted their worst day in more than a week and U.S. stocks snuffed a six-day rally for the S&P 500 after Japan reported its gross domestic product expanded just 0.3 percent in the second quarter.

Japan’s growth was half the expected rate, raising doubts about the global economy while highlighting the impact of Europe’s debt crisis on world demand.

China’s output of refined copper dropped 6.8 percent in July from the previous month’s record high production, customs data showed on Monday. [ID:nL4E8J91HS] Chinese copper consumption is considered an economic bellwether.

Traders are looking for direction, with the S&P 500 hovering not far off its highest level in more than four years. Stocks’ recent gains have been driven by hopes for further central bank easing amid signs of global economic weakness.

Janna Sampson, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois, said she was still cautious over the potential for Europe’s debt crisis to blindside the market. She said she would be closely monitoring data to see if improvement in the U.S. labor market would continue.

“I’m not sure we will get out of the summer without a pullback,” Sampson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was down 37.59 points, or 0.28 percent, at 13,170.36. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX was down 2.44 points, or 0.17 percent, at 1,403.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was down 1.92 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,018.94.

In Europe, the FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 closed down 0.4 percent at 1,094.74 points – its biggest intraday fall since ending down 1.2 percent on August 2.

The euro rose against the dollar for the first time in four days as investors pared bearish bets, but doubts about the ability of the European Central Bank to rein in the region’s debt crisis kept pressure on the currency.

Still, sterling fell against the euro on expectations that UK data due this week will bolster the case for more monetary stimulus from the Bank of England to support a flagging economy.

The euro remained below a one-month high hit last week in thin trade.

“The euro is well below the highs of last week and today we are seeing some short-covering, but the move today is generally uninspired in a lackluster session,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York.

The euro was up 0.37 percent at $1.2335 and the U.S. dollar index .DXY was down 0.17 percent at 82.414.

Short-covering entails buying the euro to close bets that the currency would fall.

Many analysts expect the euro to tread water until September 12, when the German constitutional court is to deliver its verdict on the euro zone rescue fund and the fiscal pact for budget discipline.

Oil prices rose in choppy trade to hit a three-month peak on concerns about North Sea supply and Middle East tensions, but fears about slowing growth checked gains.

Brent pared gains and U.S. crude turned lower on the Japanese data and worries of slower global growth.

Brent crude was up $1.35 at $114.30 a barrel.

U.S. crude for September delivery settled at $92.73 a barrel, down 14 cents.

U.S. Treasuries yields dropped for a third day as some investors were drawn to higher yields caused by a dramatic sell-off earlier this month.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was up 2/32 in price to yield 1.6505 percent.

Copper fell for a fourth straight trading session as worries about global economic weakness dented the outlook for industrial metals demand.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Karen Brettell; Editing by Leslie Adler and Chizu Nomiyama)

(Reuters) – Apple Inc is claiming that more than a quarter of Samsung Electronics’ $30.4 billion in U.S. smartphone and tablet sales result from copying of the iPhone and iPad or infringe on other patents, a damages expert for the U.S. company said on Monday.

The Silicon Valley company is demanding up to $2.75 billion of damages from its Korean rival, which includes lost profits.

The Korean company sold more than 87 million mobile devices from mid-2010 to March 2012, according to documents displayed before the jury.

Accountant Terry Musika, citing Samsung records and testifying as an Apple expert witness, estimated that $8.16 billion in revenue, or 22.7 million of those total unit sales over that two-year period, came from products that infringed Apple patents, such as the first Galaxy S smartphone in July 2010.

Samsung earned roughly 35.5 percent gross profit margin on that revenue, between June 2010 through March 2012, Musika said.

“It’s not me sitting at a desk with a calculator,” Musika, a former KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers accounting partner, told the court.

“There are literally hundreds of millions of calculations,” he said, adding that it took more than $1.75 million to employ a team of 20 programmers, accountants, statisticians and economists to work out damages over a plethora of gadgets.

Samsung is expected to cross examine Musika later today.

Apple’s legal battle with its fiercest business rival, which has transfixed the global mobile industry, moved into a technical damages-estimate phase this week. The trial, which began in late July, has seen a procession of executives, designers and patents experts testifying on behalf of the U.S. company. Closing arguments should begin next week.

The world’s most valuable technology company is accusing Samsung, now the leader in smartphones, of copying its iPhone and iPad. The Korean company denies that and says Apple infringes several of its wireless technology patents.

Musika also cited Samsung documents that identified the iPhone back in 2007, when the first of the revolutionary smartphones emerged, as one of four major factors defining mobile trends in the ensuing five years.

ANOTHER PEEK

The trial continues to offer glimpses behind Apple’s secretive operations, from its industrial design process to its product marketing machine.

On Monday, an Apple executive testified that the company had licensed prized design patents to Microsoft Corp but with an “anti-cloning agreement” to prevent copying of its iPhone and iPad.

Apple had reached out to Samsung in 2010, hoping to strike an agreement with its rival on patent licensing before their dispute hit the courts, patent licensing director Boris Teksler said.

Teksler testified that Apple offered a clutch of patents for licensing but, crucially, viewed patents related to what he called the “unique user experience” as a highly protected category.

Those included design patents at issue in the lawsuit, covering the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad. Teksler told jurors last week he could count “on one hand” the instances Apple has licensed those patents.

Negotiations between Apple and Samsung did not produce a licensing agreement, and Apple filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, California, in April 2011.

Apple’s decision to license its design patents to Microsoft was consistent with its corporate strategy, Teksler said, because the agreement prohibited Microsoft from manufacturing copies.

“There was no right with respect to these design patents to build clones of any type,” Teksler said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, No. 11-1846.

(Reporting By Dan Levine and Edwin Chan; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Carol Bishopric)

(Reuters) – EBay Inc shares rose 3 percent on Monday, closing in on a multi-year high after data showed the world’s largest online marketplace had a strong sales month in July.

ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell via eBay, Amazon.com and other websites, reported that client same-store sales on eBay jumped 28.2 percent in July from the same period last year.

Fixed-price sales on eBay surged a record 33.1 percent in July, compared with a year earlier, while auction-based sales dipped 1.1 percent, ChannelAdvisor added.

“We’re seeing name-brand, larger retailers do very well on eBay and eBay’s daily deal program continues to drive significant revenue for top-tier sellers,” Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, wrote in a blog on the firm’s website.

EBay, once a scrappy auction site for mom and pop sellers, is enticing some of the world’s largest retailers by arguing it can help them improve competition against e-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc.

EBay shares rose 3 percent to $45.29 in afternoon trading on Monday. The stock rose as high as $45.65 earlier in the day. In late July, eBay shares hit a multi-year high of $46.15.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; editing by Andre Grenon)