PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - May 22

May 22 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in the New York Times business pages on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* General Motors Corp (GM.N) reached a deal with its union on concessions on Thursday and is now racing the clock to persuade its bondholders to eliminate $27 billion in debt and avoid a bankruptcy filing.

* Edward Liddy, the retired insurance executive drafted by the government to lead the American International Group Inc (AIG.N) after it nearly collapsed last fall, is stepping down after eight grueling months with virtually no pay.

* Fourteen years after the execution of the Nigerian author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigeria's former military regime, Royal Dutch Shell will appear before a federal court in New York to answer charges of crimes against humanity in connection with his death.

* Anne Mulcahy said Thursday that she would step down as chief executive of Xerox Corp (XRX.N) in July after eight years in the job but remain chairwoman and be succeeded by Ursula Burns.

* GMAC, the troubled former finance arm of General Motors Corp (GM.N), confirmed Thursday that it would receive $7.5 billion from the Treasury Department to help fill holes in its balance sheet.

* The Obama administration is considering a new agency to better protect consumers from practices like those that led to the current financial crisis, the Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, said on Thursday.

* The House unanimously approved legislation on Thursday to alter the way the Pentagon buys weapons, sending it to U.S. President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

* The House Energy and Commerce Committee, splitting largely along party lines, approved on Thursday the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.

* Morgan Stanley (MS.N) has dismissed its head of prime brokerage, Stu Hendel, who ran the bank's hedge fund service business since the fall of 2006, people who were briefed on the decision said on Thursday.

* Investors gave a warm reception to the initial public offerings for venture-backed technology companies OpenTable Inc (OPEN.O) and SolarWinds Inc (SWI.N).

* Standard & Poor's warned Britain on Thursday that it was in danger of losing its AAA credit rating for the first time because of concerns about the government's deteriorating finances and its limited ability to lift its debt burden anytime soon.

* The board of Hartmarx, the Illinois-based men's clothier that is in bankruptcy protection, faced a surprise obstacle to its plan to designate a London-based investment firm as its preferred buyer.

* Buffeted earlier this year by the outcry over its plans to raise money by closing its art museum and selling the collection, Brandeis University said this week that it would suspend payments to the retirement accounts of faculty and staff members starting in July.

* BankUnited, Florida's biggest regional bank, was seized by regulators and sold to a consortium of private equity firms on Thursday, in the largest bank failure this year.

* J. Ezra Merkin, the financier who entrusted sizable portions of his friends' and investors' money to what turned out to be Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, stepped down Wednesday night as an officer of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, a wealthy congregation founded 50 years ago by his father, and whose members included some of Merkin's largest individual investment-losers.