Market News - London

LONDON (ShareCast) - Federal Reserve leaders are sticking with their policy of very low interest rates for some time to come, they indicated Wednesday, but gave new details of the factors they will use to decide when to change course.

Fed policymakers, following a two-day meeting, said that "economic activity has continued to pick up." But they also said that conditions are "likely to remain weak for a time," and left their target interest rate at a range of zero to 0.25 percent, as was widely expected. They also said that low rates are likely to be warranted "for an extended period," the Washington Post (NYSE: WPO - news) reports.

Chrysler Group vowed to return to profitability by 2011 and pay back billions of dollars in US bailout loans by 2014, an ambitious set of targets for a company that exited bankruptcy protection just months ago. At the end of a day-long presentation of its long-awaited turnaround plan Wednesday, the company said it is counting on a slew of new models to spark a surge in sales over the next five years and drive its revival, the Wall Street Journal reports.

TD Bank, a unit of Canadian banking giant TD Bank Financial Group, is facing accusations from customers that the bank allowed their accounts to be emptied without their approval. Investors allege the bank's actions may have helped Florida attorney Scott Rothstein carry out a possible fraud, the Wall St Journal reports.

The date of a civil trial in the US Securities and Exchange Commission's Galleon insider trading case has been set for 2 August, in spite of concerns it would interfere with a criminal investigation. Although the date is later than had originally been indicated, Judge Jed Rakoff signalled that barring "extraordinary circumstances" it was firm.

The judge also told a defence lawyer who signalled that he could seek a deferral as it might hurt his client in the criminal trial, not to be "too optimistic". The SEC accused Galleon founder Raj Rajaratnam, five co-defendants and New Castle, another hedge fund, of engaging in an insider trading scheme that generated more than $25m in illicit profits, the US FT reports.

Federal safety regulators have sharply rebuked Toyota Motor (Frankfurt: 853510 - news) for issuing "inaccurate and misleading" statements asserting that no defect exists in the 3.8m vehicles it recalled after a Lexus sedan accelerated out of control in San Diego County, killing four people. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement Wednesday that the recalled Toyota and Lexus vehicles do have an "underlying defect" that involves the design of the accelerator pedal and the driver's foot well, the Los Angeles Times reports.

JP Morgan Securities will forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in fees on derivatives contracts that it sold an Alabama county, under a settlement announced Wednesday that could offer hope to other governments staggering under similar deals. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a lawsuit on Wednesday that JP Morgan had made unlawful payments to friends of Jefferson County's commissioners in a scheme to win lucrative business from the county to sell bonds and trade in derivatives, the New York Times (NYSE: NYT - news) reports.

Dozens of cities are launching programs to sign up low-income people as customers at commercial banks so they can avoid the high fees typical of check-cashing stores and payday lenders. More than 50 cities and at least three states now have programs modeled on the 3-year-old Bank On San Francisco, USA Today reports.

In a bid to take advantage of their reported reach of more than 1.2 million African Americans each week, Clear Channel Radio Chicago is unifying its WGCI-FM 107.5, WVAZ-FM 102.7 and WGRB-AM 1390 under a single sales banner. Formation of the Clear Channel Chicago Urban Network marks a significant change for the media conglomerate in that it previously grouped its stations for ad sales primarily on the basis of the age of the audience they targeted, the Chicago Tribune reports.