PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - Oct 15

Oct 15 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in the New York Times business pages on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* The New York Stock Exchange and New York itself are being eclipsed by off-the-books private deals and upstart electronic markets.

* A crucial committee in the U.S. moved to tighten rules on derivatives, the obscure and complex transactions that help lead to a financial collapse.

* Concluding that some of the United States' biggest banks are in good enough shape to raise capital from private investors, senior Treasury officials would like more of them to repay billions of dollars in taxpayer money that bailed them out over the last year.

* Raising the stakes in the battle over nutritional claims for packaged foods, the Connecticut attorney general said that he was investigating a national labeling campaign that promotes products like Froot Loops and mayonnaise as nutritionally smart choices.

* A year after the financial system was brought to its knees, a resurgent JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) reported a second consecutive quarter of surprisingly strong profit on, solidifying its position at the pinnacle of American banking.

* Bruce Wasserstein, the Wall Street investment banker who helped pioneer the hostile takeover in the 1980s and reshaped the mergers and acquisitions business into a high art, died in Manhattan. Wasserstein, 61, was the chairman and chief executive of Lazard (LAZ.N).

* Two victims of Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying that the agency's failure to detect the fraud contributed to their losses.

* Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI.N) (TRI.TO) has struck a deal to buy Breakingviews.com, the business commentary site that produces columns for The New York Times and several other newspapers around the world, the two companies announced.

* After months of hunting for a buyer, The New York Times Co (NYT.N) said that it had decided not to sell The Boston Globe.

* National Amusements, the Redstone family movie theater company that also serves as a vehicle to control Viacom VIAb.N and CBS Corp (CBS.N), said it would sell nearly $1 billion worth of shares in the two media companies to pay down its large debt load, $500 million of which is due at the end of October.

* The chief executive of EADS (EAD.PA), the parent company of Airbus, gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of the state of the industry, saying that airlines were continuing to take delivery of new planes and finding ways to finance them.

* Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA) said that it would repay the $4.5 billion of debt the government bought last December, becoming the latest big bank to pay back a bailout.