company town

The Upper East Side Completes Renée Zellweger

Photo: Getty Images

REAL ESTATE

• Oscar-winning actress Renée Zellweger has gradually amassed a $8.2 million spread in a small co-op building on the Upper East Side. [NYO]

• It was raining glass yesterday in midtown when a window pane fell from the Bank of America building being constructed on 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue. The Tishman Construction manager overseeing the project said the panel, which had been stored on the 51st floor of the building, fell when it was in the process of being put into place. [NYT]

HSBC moves into 7 World Trade. [NYO]

FINANCE
• JPMorgan Chase disclosed yesterday that it lost about $1.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities and loans in the present quarter. The firm’s shares plummeted nearly 10 percent as a result — and shares of Citigroup and Bank of America also dropped. [DealBook/NYT]
• Activist investor William Ackman had a good payday yesterday: His stake in Longs Drugs Stores rose from about $137,000 to just over $600,000 after CVS Caremark announced that it would buy Longs for $2.54 billion. [Seeking Alpha]
UBS chairman Peter Kurer has known since 2006 that some of the firm’s bankers had been risking breaching American securities law. [FT]

MEDIA
NBC invested nearly $1 billion to air the Olympics, and it’s paying off: The first four nights of the Games are the most-watched summer Olympics yet (other than Atlanta’s 1996 telecast). But is this initial success because of the once-in-a-generation star Michael Phelps? [TV Decoder/NYT]
• Meanwhile, the Peacock Network has managed to screen out anything unpleasant surrounding the Olympics, including protests, pollution, doping scandals, Darfur, and Tibet. [WP]
CNN is dispatching reporters to ten new bureaus around the country, where the journalists will file articles for the Internet and use cell-phone cameras to report live. “We are harnessing technology that enables us to be anywhere and be live from anywhere,” said one CNN executive. “It completely changes how we can report.” [NYT]
• Shares of the New York Times Company dropped 6 percent yesterday after an analyst suggested that the company may need to cut its dividend. [Yahoo]
• New Jersey is becoming a media wasteland. [NYO]

LAW
• Can your Facebook account help lawyers determine whether you should sit on a jury? [Law.com]
• A new survey shows that law firms Skadden, Covington, and Sullivan & Cromwell are all considered good for women in terms of family-friendly benefits and policies, flexibility, leadership, compensation, advancement, and retention. [Law.com]
• Meanwhile, a former Siegel Frenchel & Peddy associate sues the New York firm for discriminating against her for getting pregnant. [Law.com]

The Upper East Side Completes Renée Zellweger