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A legal challenge to an ambitious plan to let the public buy shares in one of New York City's most famous landmarks — the Empire State Building — was cast aside on Tuesday in a ruling by a Manhattan judge.

SeaWorld Entertainment Inc.'s stock surged in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The owner of theme parks famous for water shows featuring killer whales and dolphins jumped $5.29, or 19.6 percent, to $32.29 in afternoon trading, after the company and its backers raised $702 million.

China's campaign to cut a huge backlog of initial public offerings has failed to deliver. Now there are signs that the authorities could be preparing to reopen the IPO floodgates.

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.

Soccer powerhouse Manchester United is expected to launch its IPO in New York as early as next week, for pricing in early August, after earlier attempts in Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK.

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc said it will offer cash and rebates totaling $40 million to compensate clients affected by the problems with Facebook Inc's initial public offering.

Facebook on Thursday priced its initial public offering at $38 per share. The social networking company, which is expected to go public tomorrow under the ticker symbol "FB," stands to reap $18.4 billion in the IPO.

The average initial public offering in Hong Kong since the start of 2009 is down 13%, and more than two-thirds of the offerings have underperformed the Hang Seng Index since their listings.

Facebook will list its shares with Nasdaq, according to media reports. That would be a big win for the Nasdaq, which competes fiercely with NYSE Euronext Inc., especially for an initial public offering as large as Facebook's, pegged at $5 billion. The New York Times and CNBC cited anonymous sources on the potential listing.

In a breakdown that resembled a mini version of the 2010 "flash crash," a series of blunders hit the market debut of BATS Global Markets Exchange Inc on Friday, causing the company to take the extremely rare step of withdrawing its initial public offering of shares.