In December 2006, the appellate court overturned the certification of classes in six test cases that were selected by the underwriter defendants and plaintiffs in the coordinated proceedings. Because class certification was a condition of the settlement, it was unlikely that the settlement would receive final Court approval. On June 28, 2007, the Court entered an order terminating the proposed settlement based upon a stipulation among the parties to the settlement.

According to the Company’s FORM 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2005, in February 2003, the defendants’ motion to dismiss certain of the plaintiffs’ claims was granted in part, but, for the most part, denied. In June 2003, a proposed settlement of this litigation was structured between the plaintiffs, the issuer defendants, the issuer officers and directors named as defendants, and the issuers’ insurance companies. The proposed settlement generally provides that the issuer defendants and related individual defendants will be released from the litigation without any liability other than certain expenses incurred to date in connection with the litigation, the issuer defendants’ insurers will guarantee $1.0 billion in recoveries by plaintiff class members, the issuer defendants will assign certain claims against the underwriter defendants to the plaintiff class members, and the issuer defendants will have the opportunity to recover certain litigation-related expenses if the plaintiffs recover more than $5.0 billion from the underwriter defendants. The respective boards of directors of iVillage and Women.com each approved the proposed settlement in July 2003. On June 25, 2004, the plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary approval of the settlement with the court, which was accompanied by a brief filed by the issuer defendants in support of the plaintiffs’ motion. The court requested that any objections to preliminary approval of the settlement be submitted by July 14, 2004, and certain underwriter defendants formally objected to the settlement. The plaintiffs and issuer defendants separately filed replies to the underwriter defendants’ objections to the settlement on August 4, 2004. On February 15, 2005, the court issued an opinion and order granting preliminary approval to the settlement and ordering the plaintiffs and issuer defendants to submit to the court a revised settlement stipulation consistent with the court’s order. Pursuant to the court’s instruction, the parties to the settlement agreement submitted the revised settlement stipulation on May 2, 2005. On August 31, 2005, the Court granted preliminary approval to the amended settlement stipulation. As part of its August 31, 2005 preliminary order, the court set a deadline of March 24, 2006 for any party to file an objection to the settlement and scheduled a fairness hearing for April 24, 2006.

The original complaint further alleges that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 because the Prospectus distributed to investors and the Registration Statement filed with the SEC in order to gain regulatory approval for the iVillage offering contained material misstatements regarding the commissions that the underwriters would derive from the IPO and failed to disclose the additional commissions and ``laddering'' scheme.