News Corp is also being investigated over claims that senior executives misled investors in 2011, causing the company's stock to be traded at an artificially high price.

At one point Weiss dominated the market in securities class-action suits, in which investors who suffer losses typically claim that executives had misled them about a company's financial condition.

Their lawyers argued that in early 1997, the top executives misled investors by painting a deceivingly rosy picture of the company's prospects, even as they dumped their own shares.

The lawsuit initially charged that Apple and its executives misled investors about both the Twiggy disk drive and the Lisa computer.

After the hearings, some Democrats said that the executives had misled them with incomplete and inaccurate answers.

This month, prosecutors contended that his former executives and accountants had deliberately misled creditors, altering records to conceal the group's debts.

Also, the company would concede that the former chief executive did not intentionally mislead board members about the extent and risk of the oil futures contracts, the reports said.

Proving it occurred after the merger's close requires evidence that executives intentionally or recklessly misled investors, a much harder case to make.

In a news conference yesterday, Mr. Spitzer was sharply critical of Jeffrey Greenberg, saying that he and other top executives of Marsh had initially misled his investigators.

Other executives misled Mr. Hayden about the business, said Michael Zukerman, the company's general counsel.