The US Federal Reserve may be required to make public some of its records on emergency lending programmes to banks in the financial bailout, an appeals court ruled on Friday in cases brought by news organisations. Fox News Network, a unit of News Corp, and Bloomberg LP had sought details of the central bank's actions under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which requires government agencies to make documents available to the public.
Bloomberg won its case last August in US District Court in Manhattan and the Board of Governors of the central bank appealed. Fox lost its case in July. "We remand to the district court to order the Board's further disclosure and further searches, and to determine if what is discovered in further searches must be disclosed," a three judge panel in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said in a written opinion on the Fox News Network case. Bloomberg brought its case to force the Fed to release records of the actions it took to shore up the financial system starting in late 2007, including the March 2008 sale of Bear Stearns Cos to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.