Stocks, Nyse | featured news

Shares of Pinnacle Foods Inc (PF.N), owner of the Birds Eye and Duncan Hines brands, rose 13.7 percent in their New York Stock Exchange debut on Thursday. The stock was trading at $22.73 after the company backed by Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) raised $580 million in its initial public offering.

The New York Stock Exchange is being sold to a little-known rival in Atlanta for about $8 billion, ending more than two centuries of independence for the iconic Big Board. The buyer, IntercontinentalExchange, a 12-year-old exchange that deals in investing contracts known as futures, said Thursday that little would change for the trading floor in Manhattan's financial district.

Facebook joins the Nasdaq-100 Index, a move accelerated by the departure of Infosys, which is moving to the New York Stock Exchange.

The New York Stock Exchange said it will pay $5 million to resolve U.S. regulatory charges that it gave certain customers “an improper head start” on trading information.

The exchange operators extended the deadline for completing their planned tie-up to March 31 while European competition authorities continue an in-depth probe of the deal.

The New York Stock Exchange's website experienced slowness for a brief period of time Monday afternoon, on the same day that the hacker group "Anonymous" called for an attack against the Big Board operator's site.

Nasdaq OMX has stepped up its opposition to the planned merger between NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse and said the deal would "irrevocably destroy" competition in Europe's listed-derivatives markets, just as the European Commission nears a decision on the tie-up.

Main stock exchanges Nasdaq, NYSE and BATS expect to open trading on Monday as usual despite Hurricane Irene, although a final decision, especially on opening the Big Board floor, is yet to come.

The top executive of NYSE Euronext said a critical European Union review of the company's agreed-upon tie-up with Deutsche Börse will likely result in conditions being placed on the combined company, rather than an outright block of the deal.

The New York Stock Exchange, an icon of American capitalism, is expected to take a crucial step toward ceding control to a German company on Thursday, with little opposition expected from investors.