Double dip: Eurozone falls back into recession

The Eurozone is back in a recession, its first in three years, as gross domestic product for the debt-plagued 17-nation bloc contracted 0.1% in the third quarter from the earlier quarter.

In the second quarter, the currency collective tightened 0.2%, according to the official European Union statistics agency, Eurostat. Two consecutive quarterly slips make a recession.

Compared with a year earlier, GDP is down 0.6%. Eurostat said last month that unemployment in the bloc was at a record high of 11.6%. Protests and strikes rippled across Europe on Wednesday.

Growth in core countries such as Germany and France couldn't counteract the plunges in long-struggling, austerity-bound nations such as Spain and Italy. Portugal took an especially nasty 0.8% dive.

Even countries that had been expanding took a dive, with the Netherlands experiencing a 1.1% squeeze and Austria contracting 0.1%. Germany saw its growth slow to 0.2% in the third quarter from 0.3% in the second.

France, however, reversed a string of flat or down quarters with 0.2% expansion.

The wider, 27-member European Union escaped recession, its GDP advancing 0.1% in the third quarter after tightening 0.2% in the second. In Britain., fresh off the Summer Olympics, the economy boomed 1% after a 0.4% drop.

A separate Eurostat report Thursday showed annual inflation in the euro-currency area down to 2.5% in October, from 2.6% the previous month.

In a speech Thursday, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi urged governments to avoid tax hikes in favor of spending cuts as a strategy for fiscal consolidation. He also stressed the need for "calm pragmatism going forward.

"It is essential that all parties involved in Europe's large and complex path of reforms stick to their commitments," Draghi said.

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Pelosi decides to remain as House Democratic leader

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she will run to keep her job as the Democratic leader in the House.

WASHINGTON -- Nancy Pelosi, the liberal San Francisco congresswoman who became the first woman speaker of the House, will seek to remain the Democratic leader in the next Congress.

Pelosi made the announcement Wednesday to a packed meeting of her caucus.

"They say a picture is worth a million words. Well this picture is worth millions of aspirations of the American people," Pelosi told the gathering, according to a Democratic leadership aide in attendance at the closed meeting. "This new class makes our caucus historic. The first time in legislative history that a caucus will be a majority of women and minorities."

"The message is clear from the American people. They want us to work together to get things done. And that's what these folks are here to do. Just like all of you.

"We may not have the gavel, but as I can see in this room, we have the unity," Pelosi said, according to the leadership aide, who asked for anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

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Pelosi had been mum about her plans after Democrats failed to win the majority in Tuesday’s election.

A champion campaign fundraiser, Pelosi is regarded as a polarizing figure. Elected to the House in 1987, she was chosen by the Democratic rank and file in 2002 to succeed Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri as minority leader, becoming the first woman to head a party in either chamber of Congress, as well as the first top party leader in the House from California.

In 2007, she became speaker — and the first Californian to head the House — overseeing passage of the most far-reaching healthcare overhaul since the creation of Medicare, an economic stimulus program, and the revamping of financial regulations, often with little or no Republican support.  But while she — and her Democratic majority — ruled the House, she became a favorite Republican campaign target as evidence of what's wrong with Washington. In 2010, she ran again for minority leader after Democrats lost control of the chamber, but has stayed around in hopes of leading her party back to the majority.

Republicans welcomed the prospect of continuing to have Pelosi as a target.

"There is no better person to preside over the most liberal House Democratic Caucus in history than the woman who is solely responsible for relegating it to a prolonged minority status," said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the House GOP campaign arm. "This decision signals that House Democrats have absolutely no interest in regaining the trust and confidence of the American people who took the speaker’s gavel away from Nancy Pelosi in the first place."

PHOTOS: America goes to the polls

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Petraeus affair and the role of biographers

NEW YORK (AP) — The affair between retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and author Paula Broadwell is but an extreme example of the love/hate history between biographers and their subjects.

Even before their outing led to Petraeus' resignation as CIA director, Broadwell had been criticized for the rosy tone of "All In," which The Associated Press described in 2011 as "part hagiography and part defense" of his strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as long as biographies are written by and about human beings, scientific precision will remain an ideal. The stories of famous women and men often are colored by rapture and disenchantment, confusion and bias.

"As with psychiatrists, same with biographers, you shouldn't sleep with your subject," Blake Bailey, the prize-winning biographer of authors John Cheever and Richard Yates, said with a laugh.

"The ideal case is to have no assumptions. ... But it is possible to write a great book and have strong opinions. ('Eminent Victorians' author) Lytton Strachey, the father of all modern biographers, had a very distinctive voice and a very distinctive perspective — a person looking down from the world at a great distance, quite disparagingly, but with vast humor that informs every word."

Broadwell conducted extensive interviews with both critics and supporters of Petraeus, but the finished story was overwhelmingly positive. She is far from alone in allowing personal or professional regard to shape a biography, especially when the subject cooperates. Flattering books come out all the time, whether a biography of Dick Cheney by Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes or Chris Matthews' "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero."

Years spent together, as Broadwell had with Petraeus in Afghanistan, can make the biographer's experience intensely personal, whether sexual or not. Walter Isaacson did not avoid the unpleasant side of Steve Jobs, but acknowledged he had bonded strongly with the dying Apple CEO. Doris Kearns Goodwin was an aide to Lyndon Johnson who sometimes took notes while the ex-president lay in her bed, a relationship that she called platonic and described in her book on him, "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream."

Some relationships end in court. Jimmy McDonough spent years working on an authorized biography of Neil Young, only to have Young withdraw support and attempt to stop publication, leading to mutual lawsuits and delay in the release of "Shakey," which came out in 2002. Some biographers seem energized by perceived sins, like the late Albert Goldman and his takedowns of Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Others use scholarship to build up or pick apart a figure from the distant past. Jon Meacham's new biography of Thomas Jefferson praises him as a subtle and effective politician, while a competing book, Henry Wiencek's "Master of the Mountain," faults Jefferson as a calculating slave holder who tolerated brutality.

David McCullough has likened the biographer's choice to picking a roommate, one you must live with for years. McCullough himself abandoned a Picasso book out of distaste for the painter's private life and chose men he related to for his two Pulitzer Prize winning presidential biographies, Harry Truman and John Adams. Former JFK aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. won a Pulitzer for "A Thousand Days," his book on the Kennedy administration. But his reverence for the late president led Gore Vidal to dismiss "A Thousand Days" as a "political novel."

Biography often is the art of reconciling opposites. Robert Caro, the prize-winning biographer of New York municipal builder Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, has taken on men who have both inspired and dismayed him. A former investigative journalist, Caro sees his job as collecting as much information as possible and only then forming opinions. There is no such thing as "objective truth," he says, but there are enough "objective facts" to bring you close.

For his Moses and Johnson books, Caro has relied upon countless documents and interviews. He has labeled his Johnson series, begun soon after the president's death and still going, as a narrative of darkness and light, of the basest cruelty and the noblest achievement. His Moses book, "The Power Broker," was another epic of greatness and destruction and even more complicated to write because he actually interviewed Moses.

"You were awed by seeing the scope of his vision as he talked about it to you and explained it to you. You see him standing in front of this map, with a yellow pencil and sharp point, just gesturing toward this tri-state area that he sees as one entity and has a vision for it," says Caro, whose book was harshly criticized by Moses, but won the Pulitzer in 1975 and is now standard reading.

"But I was simultaneously talking to the people he had displaced, hounded them out of their homes. You have to show both of these things, his genius and its effect on people."

Authors have followed paths they never imagined before starting a book or encountering the subject. Edmund Morris was a prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, but the chance to write about a living president led him to take unusual license. Granted years of access to Ronald Reagan, Morris was left so mystified that he inserted a fictionalized version of himself into the book, "Dutch," as a way of making sense out of the president.

Jane Leavy, author of a well-regarded biography on Mickey Mantle, said she had a hard time starting the book because of her childhood worship for the New York Yankees star. She decided the best way to move ahead was to acknowledge up front her memories, and map out the life of the flawed and troubled man she came to know and to hear about.

"He was multidimensional and far more complicated than the hagiographic biographies I read in school or the dark stories about him being a womanizer and an offensive drunk," she says. "No one is one way or another. The fact he was horrible to his wife doesn't invalidate his skill. So the task became why he treated people the way he did. And that's the biographer's job."

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Drug Compounders Get Help on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON — Despite two decades of dire health warnings and threats of federal intervention, the specialty drugmakers at the center of the nation’s deadly meningitis outbreak have repeatedly staved off tougher federal oversight with the help of powerful allies in Congress.

Over the years, industry friends like Tom DeLay, the former House Republican leader from Texas, have come to its defense. Even Senator Edward M. Kennedy, regarded as the strongest health care advocate in Congress in recent times, dropped efforts to impose new safeguards.

But the pharmacists known as compounders are now facing their biggest regulatory threat as they confront questions on Wednesday and Thursday at Congressional hearings on the deadly outbreak. The question is whether Congress will move to oversee the niche industry more aggressively.

“A lot of the blame for the meningitis situation lies at Congress’s door,” said Larry D. Sasich, a research pharmacist who has written about compounders’ safety record. For specially mixed drugs that fall into a gray area of federal law, he said, “the protections for your cat or dog are stronger than for your wife and children.”

By Washington standards, the industry’s financial clout is not terribly large. The main trade group, the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists, has spent $1.1 million on lobbying in the past decade, while major players in the business have given at least $300,000 to candidates since 2008, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group in Washington.

But by positioning itself as a more affordable, community-based alternative to huge drug manufacturers, compounders have attracted broad support from politicians. They have become popular among proponents of hormone therapy to slow aging and advocates for the autistic, who often distrust the traditional pharmaceutical industry, and rely on compounders’ tailor-made blends.

If history is a guide, it often takes a disaster to get real change in the law.

In 1938, Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act after a drug company mixed an antibiotic with a toxic solvent and more than 100 people were killed, many of them children. In 1962, it amended that act to effectively create the modern drug approval system after thalidomide, a German drug intended to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, caused severe birth defects in Europe, said Kevin Outterson, an associate professor of law at Boston University.

Experts say the magnitude of the current crisis, in which more than 400 people have been sickened with meningitis and 32 have died, may finally spur action. This week’s hearings are expected to include testimony from the head of the Food and Drug Administration and the head of the Massachusetts pharmacy that produced the tainted drug.

Much of the scrutiny has focused on lax oversight by state boards and the Food and Drug Administration. But public health and drug industry experts say Congress is partly to blame for failing to clearly define the F.D.A.’s authority to police the practice.

A familiar cycle has played out in Washington since the 1990s: Publicity over illnesses or deaths from compounding drugs prompts outrage. Expert witnesses warn of the dangers of an unregulated industry. Proposals to fix the system follow. Then nothing happens.

“The public is at risk, an alarming great risk,” one pharmacist warned in 2003 Senate testimony after one person died and five more fell ill from contaminated medicine in 2002 produced by a South Carolina pharmacy.

Compounding, the practice of mixing medicines for individual patients, has grown in recent decades, helping fill gaps during drug shortages and offering cheaper versions of commercial drugs. But it has also become prone to abuse, with some pharmacies becoming, in effect, mini-drug manufacturers.

While the F.D.A. has clear authority to regulate drug manufacturers, state authorities have the main jurisdiction over pharmacies. Determining which category a company falls into is difficult because compounders are not required to give the F.D.A. access to their books.

Ultimately, stronger regulation has been stymied by sharp opposition from the industry and its defenders in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, many of whom have compounders in their districts.

In 2008, the F.D.A. challenged what it said were misleading claims by compounders that their hormone therapy for older women was safer and more natural than that of big drug makers; it was met with staunch opposition, including objections from Suzanne Somers, the celebrity anti-aging advocate. The agency eventually prevailed.

Hundreds of members of Congress have attended conferences or taken part in charitable events and letter-writing campaigns organized by the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists. The trade group said recently that its Congressional supporters had surged in recent years and that compounding had “gone from being a little-known practice to having a strong and steady presence in Washington.”

Texas, home to many compounding pharmacies and their main trade lobbying group, has been an important base of support, producing industry allies like Mr. DeLay and Representative Joe L. Barton, a Texas Republican.

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Toyota Prius recall: Automaker will fix nearly 700,000 hybrids

Toyota Motor Corp. announced two safety recalls for its flagship Prius hybrid.

The automaker said the steering intermediate extension shafts in 670,000 Prius cars sold in the U.S. need to be inspected and in some cases replaced. And 350,000 of those hybrids also will have to have their electric water pumps replaced.

Toyota will recall another 2 million vehicles worldwide, including the Prius and the Corolla, to fix the same problems.  

The gas-sipping Prius has become an important vehicle for Toyota, giving the company a reputation for producing fuel-efficient, green vehicles and quietly becoming one of the best sellers in the automaker’s lineup.

Toyota is on track to sell more than 250,000 Prius hatchbacks and station wagons this year, which will make it one of the best selling passenger cars in the U.S.  So far this year, the Prius has been the best selling car in California. Toyota sells more hybrids in the U.S. than all other automakers combined.

In the U.S., the recall includes 2004 through 2009 model year Prius hybrids.

The steering shaft problem results from a manufacturing error in which certain parts in the system did not have the required hardness and can deform.

Toyota said that in some of the cars, the electric motor that drives the water pump that circulates coolant through the hybrid components can shut off. In some cases this can cause the hybrid system to stop while the vehicle is being driven.
 
There have been no crashes or injuries reported for these two conditions.

Owners of vehicles covered by these safety recalls will receive an owner notification letter via first-class mail starting in December.  Any authorized Toyota dealer will perform these recalls at no charge.

This is the second large recall by Toyota in barely a month.  

In October, the Japanese automaker recalled 2.5 million vehicles nationally to fix a faulty power window switch that has been linked to at least nine injuries and several hundred reports of smoke and fire. In one instance reported to federal regulators, a passenger in a Camry was burned while trying to use a loose article of clothing to extinguish a fire caused by the switch.

The big recalls come as Toyota's vehicle sales in the U.S. have been surging after being derailed last year. Sales were hurt by manufacturing disruptions and inventory shortages caused by the Japanese earthquake. Massive recalls in 2010 for sudden-acceleration problems and other safety defects also added to Toyota's sales woes.

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Mike D'Antoni plans to coach Lakers on Sunday

Mike D'Antoni won NBA coach of the year in his first full season as head coach of the Phoenix Suns. (Jeff Gross / Getty Images)

By T.J. Simers

November 13, 2012, 8:36 a.m.

Just finished interviewing new Lakers Coach Mike D’Antoni by telephone, and how’s that for a fine start in town — he's talking to Page 2.

It’s going to take a little while to transcribe tape and write a column, but here’s how we began Tuesday morning.

"Got bad news for you, Mike. You’re losing 73% to 11% to Phil Jackson in a poll of who people would like to see coaching the Lakers."

D’Antoni laughs. "I’ve got some really close friends who are Laker fans and they were disappointed I got the job."

Reminded that the fans in Staples Center have been chanting, "We want Phil," D’Antoni says, "They can’t chant, 'We want Mike,' because they got him."

D’Antoni is still recovering from reconstructive surgery on his right knee. He’s getting around now with one crutch or a cane.

He will fly to Los Angeles on Wednesday, meet his team Thursday and says he’s probably aiming to make his Lakers coaching debut Sunday.

"When I feel better I’ll start coaching, and I think miraculously I’ll start feeling better when Steve [Nash] is feeling better," he says. "I’ve already tried coaching without him and that didn’t work out too well, so I’m thinking I’ll be smart this time."

If the tape recorder batteries hold up, more to come soon.

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New Lumia phones seen winning Nokia more time

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia‘s new Lumia smartphones are trickling into the market and early signs suggest they may sell well enough to give the handset maker more time in its fight against industry leaders Samsung and Apple.

But investors shouldn’t expect a quick turnaround for the struggling Finnish cellphone maker, with rival gadgets like mini tablet computers vying for consumers’ attention, analysts said.

“Positive reviews are a great start but as we have seen many times before these won’t deliver strong sales volumes on their own,” said Pete Cunningham, an analyst at research firm Canalys.

Successful sales of the latest Lumia 920 and 820 models are crucial for Nokia’s survival. The former market leader is burning through cash while it loses share in both high-end smartphones and cheaper handsets.

FIM Securities analyst Michael Schroder forecast Nokia will sell 1-3 million of the new models this quarter. It sold 2.9 million older Lumia models in the third quarter, compared to Apple’s sales of around 26.6 million iPhones in the same period.

“In any case the uptake will not be massive,” he predicted.

Lumia’s sales could serve a verdict on Chief Executive Stephen Elop‘s decision in February 2011 to partner with Microsoft instead of using Google‘s Android or continuing to develop Nokia’s own operating system.

Investors had feared poor reviews and weak sales could bring an end to the company’s smartphone business early next year.

So far, consumer reviews seem to favor the feel and look of the new models, which include high-definition cameras and the latest Microsoft Windows Phone 8 software.

“It (the Lumia 920) is very similar in appearance to the Lumia 900, but has curved glass, rounded edges, and curved back so it feels great in your hand. It is a dense device, but if you look at all the pros and cons the heft is worth it,” said a reviewer for tech website ZDNet.

That’s an improvement from the market’s reaction when the new model was first unveiled. The shares slumped 13 percent that day with investors citing a lack of a “wow” factor.

MAKE OR BREAK

Nokia is taking a gradual approach to launching the phones, and availability is expected to vary by market for the next few weeks, compared with Apple’s iPhone models which usually go on sale on the same day to global fanfare.

“While we are very impressed with the hardware features of the Lumia 920 and the improved software functionality of Windows Phone 8, we believe a focused launch to drive steady sales growth is necessary,” said Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

In Canada, one of the earliest launch markets, carrier Rogers Communications has trained its sales staff more to sell the latest Lumias than the previous models, said John Boynton, Rogers’ executive vice president of marketing.

He predicted the phones would be popular with first-time smartphone users, thanks to homescreens with tile-like icons designed to help users navigate applications and functions.

“They’re a little nervous at some of the more complex smartphones that are out there,” he said. “The tile format is a really, really simplified way for people to get comfortable using smartphones.”

In France, retail staff have become more confident in explaining Windows Phones to their customers, according to Laurent Lame, devices marketing chief at SFR which is the country’s second-biggest mobile operator.

“They know the product better after six months of good sales of the Lumia 610,” Lame said, adding he was now more optimistic about the Nokia-Microsoft partnership. “For once, with Windows 8, we are not starting from zero.”

Telefonica Deutschland Chief Executive Rene Schuster said he was “very, very pleased” with the early progress of Lumia sales.

Some retailers were more cautious, however, and in some cities there were no demonstration models for customers to test.

A salesman in an O2 store at the Zeil, Frankfurt’s busiest shopping area, said the store could take orders for the phone but could not show it. Demand was “okay, but not huge,” he said.

Analysts also expect tough competition during the pre-Christmas shopping season from the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Apple’s iPhone 5. Taiwan’s HTC has also introduced smartphones running Windows Phone 8 software.

Other rival gadgets include Apple’s iPad mini as well as cheaper tablets from Google and Amazon.

The stakes could not be higher for Nokia’s Elop, who said in February 2011 the company’s transition would take two years.

“This is absolutely a make-or-break phone for the Windows Phone strategy,” FIM Securities’ Schroder said. “If it fails, they have to take a whole new course.” (Additional reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto, Leila Abboud in Paris, Harro Ten Wolde in Frankfurt and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki; Editing by Mark Potter)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Day-Lewis heeded inner ear to find Lincoln's voice

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A towering figure such as Abraham Lincoln, who stood 6 feet 4 and was one of history's master orators, must have had a booming voice to match, right? Not in Daniel Day-Lewis' interpretation.

Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th president in Steven Spielberg's epic film biography "Lincoln," which goes into wide release this weekend, settled on a higher, softer voice, saying it's more true to descriptions of how the man actually spoke.

"There are numerous accounts, contemporary accounts, of his speaking voice. They tend to imply that it was fairly high, in a high register, which I believe allowed him to reach greater numbers of people when he was speaking publicly," Day-Lewis said in an interview. "Because the higher registers tend to reach farther than the lower tones, so that would have been useful to him."

"Lincoln" is just the fifth film in the last 15 years for Day-Lewis, a two-time Academy Award winner for best actor ("My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood"). Much of his pickiness stems from a need to understand characters intimately enough to feel that he's actually living out their experiences.

The soft, reedy voice of his Lincoln grew out of that preparation.

"I don't separate vocal work, and I don't dismember a character into its component parts and then kind of bolt it all together, and off you go," Day-Lewis said. "I tend to try and allow things to happen slowly, over a long period of time. As I feel I'm growing into a sense of that life, if I'm lucky, I begin to hear a voice.

"And I don't mean in a supernatural sense. I begin to hear the sound of a voice, and if I like the sound of that, I live with that for a while in my mind's ear, whatever one might call it, my inner ear, and then I set about trying to reproduce that."

Lincoln himself likely learned to use his voice to his advantage depending on the situation, Day-Lewis said.

"He was a supreme politician. I've no doubt in my mind that when you think of all the influences in his life, from his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a good part of his younger life in southern Illinois, that the sounds of all those regions would have come together in him somehow.

"And I feel that he probably learned how to play with his voice in public and use it in certain ways in certain places and in certain other ways in other places. Especially in the manner in which he expressed himself. I think, I've no doubt that he was conscious enough of his image."

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Q & A: Weighing the Evidence

Q. My husband weighs twice as much as I do, yet we take the same dose of over-the-counter medications, as recommended on the packaging. Shouldn’t weight be a factor?

A. There is little information about using weight as a factor in adjusting doses of either prescription or over-the-counter medications, said Dr. Steven A. Kaplan, director of the Iris Cantor Men’s Health Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.

“We are beginning to study different responses by weight,” he said, but he and other researchers have reached no conclusions on recommendations for therapy.

“In my own field, urology,” he added, “my opinion is that it is more likely for the recommended dose to be ineffective in a larger person rather than to be toxic in a thinner adult.”

Some prescription drugs, like chemotherapy agents, already have their dosages adjusted for weight because of their highly toxic nature. As for over-the-counter drugs, recommended doses generally tend to be weighted in favor of safety rather than efficacy, Dr. Kaplan said.

He and other doctors emphasized the importance of following package directions. For example, acetaminophen (like Tylenol) can present a life-threatening risk if the liver cannot process a high dose. If you find that the recommended dose does not work for you, Dr. Kaplan said, speak to your doctor.

C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Readers may submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to question@nytimes.com.

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Bank of New York Mellon unit settles Madoff case for $210 million

New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

By Andrew Tangel

November 13, 2012, 8:14 a.m.

A Bank of New York Mellon subsidiary will pay $210 million to settle claims it concealed red flags showing  Bernard Madoff was a fraud.

Due diligence by the unit, Ivy Asset Management, revealed discrepancies in Madoff's stated investment strategy, according to a statement by New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman, who announced the settlement Tuesday.

While Ivy steered clients to invest in Madoff, collecting fees for itself, some at the firm had reservations about Madoff, the attorney general said.

Schneiderman cited an email one Ivy principal sent to a subordinate: "Ah, Madoff, you omitted one possibility - he’s a fraud!"

Ivy didn't disclose its suspicions to clients, Schneiderman said, and falsely told them that "we have no reason to believe there is anything improper in the Madoff operation."

 “Ivy Asset Management violated its fundamental responsibility as an investment advisor by putting its own pecuniary interests ahead of the interests of its clients," Schneiderman said. "An investment advisor should apprise its clients of risks, but Ivy deliberately concealed negative facts it uncovered in its due diligence of Madoff in order to keep earning millions of dollars in fees. As a result, its clients suffered massive and avoidable losses."

Madoff's massive multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme was revealed in December 2008. He has been serving a 150-year prison sentence.

Schneiderman sued Ivy in 2010. The settlement concludes suits also brought by the U.S. Department of Labor and private plaintiffs, and includes another $9 million from other defendants. The settlement will repay Madoff's investors and cover fees and expenses of those who brought the suits.

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