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The alternatives include the possibility of tying up with IntercontinentalExchange Inc (ICE.N) or CME Group Inc (CME.O) to wrest NYSE Euronext out of its deal with Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE), the person said.

Nasdaq may also consider selling itself or buying another competitor if it is unable to compete with Deutsche Boerse on the NYSE deal, the Wall Street Journal said.

A Nasdaq spokesman was not immediately available to comment. The person familiar with the situation asked to remain anonymous because the talks are private.

Nasdaq has found itself to be the odd-man out in a series of exchange-operator deals in recent months.

Pressure is mounting on global bourses to seek partnerships to counter the threat from bigger rivals and alternative trading platforms, and to cut costs.

In recent weeks, Deutsche Boerse agreed to buy NYSE, the London Stock Exchange Group Plc (LSE.L) announced a deal to take over Canadian stock market operator TMX Group Inc (X.TO), and BATS Global Markets said it will buy peer Chi-X Europe.

Last October, Singapore Exchange agreed to buy Australia's ASX.

It is not clear where Nasdaq's efforts will lead, the person familiar said.

Indeed, officials at both ICE and CME have been cautious about potential deals.

Earlier this month ICE Chief Financial Officer Scott Hill said his exchange, which trades energy futures as well as over-the-counter swaps, sees "a lot of opportunity in the changes that are going on."

But he said ICE is "proceeding cautiously on the M&A side, because what we don't want to do is we don't want to acquire to build scale."

Officials at CME, which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, have said they are not planning any large acquisitions and have promised to return excess cash to investors in the form of dividends or share buybacks.

The New York Times' Dealbook last week said Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange were in talks to team up on a possible bid for NYSE Euronext.

(Additional reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Gary Hill and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

The long-awaited ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck followed a trial in which Lehman argued that Barclays got a sweetheart deal in acquiring its U.S. investment banking and brokerage operations.

Lehman agreed to sell that business for about $1.85 billion on September 20, 2008, just five days after the company's Chapter 11 filing became what many consider the seminal event of the global financial crisis.

"The court was not deceived in a manner that should now be permitted to upset the integrity of the sale order," Peck wrote in a 103-page opinion issued late Tuesday. "The sale process may have been imperfect, but it was still adequate under the exceptional circumstances of Lehman Week."

Peck said any disclosure lapses did not affect the "fairness" or outcome of the sale hearing. He said there was an "undeniably correct" perception at the time that the sale "mitigated systemic risk," helped avert "an even greater economic calamity," and benefited all interested parties.

"The court still would have entered the very same sale order because there was no better alternative and, perhaps most importantly, because the sale to Barclays was the means both to avoid a potentially disastrous piecemeal liquidation and to save thousands of jobs in the troubled financial services industry," he said.

Peck's ruling is a setback for Lehman, which last month projected it would have $60.1 billion to pay out to creditors, who believe they are owed six times that amount.

Kimberly Macleod, a Lehman spokeswoman, declined immediate comment, saying the company is reviewing Peck's decision.

Barclays spokesman Michael O'Looney said the British bank is pleased the court found the transaction "the product of arm's length negotiations," and that Barclays acted in good faith.

Lehman has also sued other banks including Bank of America Corp, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, JPMorgan Chase & Co to recover assets for creditors.

The trial over the Barclays transaction lasted 34 days stretching from April to October of last year, Peck wrote.

The case is In re: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 08-13555.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Gary Hill)

The weak performance, which saw HP missing its own revenue target for the fiscal first quarter, made for a tough start for new Chief Executive Leo Apotheker.

The January quarter was the first for the former SAP CEO, who joined the company after the controversial ouster of the Mark Hurd and has since put his own stamp on the company. HP added five new directors to its board in a major shake-up just last month.

Sales from its personal systems group slipped 1 percent as the company's personal computer sales in China continued to struggle. Revenue from its giant services business slid 2 percent, as HP saw a shortfall in short-term, "add-on" deals in areas such as infrastructure technology outsourcing.

"If you use Q1 as a marker, it's clear that we do a lot of things well at HP. It's also clear that we have isolated areas we need to improve," Apotheker told reporters on a conference call.

HP's poor showing overshadowed a beat on fiscal first-quarter profit, driven in part by cost discipline and lower component costs that had also boosted rival Dell Inc.

HP's bright spots included strong sales of enterprise servers, storage and networking equipment, and a good performance in the printing group.

"The net of it was you had a miss on the PC side, and that's clearly not bouncing back," said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross. "People are worried about the ability of HP to show strong growth."

Gross margin came in at 24.4 percent, just above Wall Street's forecast. But HP warned that lower component prices would not benefit it as much this quarter.

"If it's all from component prices they won't get any credit," said Wedbush Securities analyst Kaushik Roy. "The question is -- are gross margins getting better partly because better supply chain and mix shift to higher margin businesses like networking, storage and servers?"

The world's largest technology corporation by revenue raised its forecast for fiscal 2011 non-GAAP earnings, predicting a profit of $5.20 to $5.28 a share. But it trimmed its revenue outlook to a range of $130 billion to $131.5 billion, from a previous $132 billion to $133.5 billion.

The lower sales outlook was due to weak demand for consumer PCs, and slower-than-normal growth in HP services.

HP emphasized that its forecast -- which was also below analysts' expectations for the current April quarter on a revenue basis -- was conservative.

For a graphic comparing HP with major rivals International Business Machines Corp, Dell and Apple Inc, click r.reuters.com/nyq28r

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