NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — A New York judge threw out the criminal convictions against two former Marsh & McLennan Cos. executives who he found guilty of restraint of trade in 2008.

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice James Yates tossed the convictions against William Gilman and Edward McNenney, former managing directors at Marsh, in a July 2 written decision. The pair had been accused of fixing prices to steer business to insurers that paid Marsh hidden fees between November 1998 and September 2004.

The decision was the latest loss for the New York Attorney General's office in its six-year probe of anti-competitive sales practices in the insurance industry. The case, begun under former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, was tried under his successor, Andrew Cuomo.

Suppressed evidence, along with other failures, including "newly discovered contradictory evidence, undermines the Court's confidence in the verdict", the judge wrote in his decision.

Yates found the two men guilty on February 22, 2008, of a single count of restraint of trade under New York's antitrust statutes after a 10-month trial.

Of 37 original counts in the indictment, 36 resulted in either dismissal or acquittal, according to Richard Spinogatti, an attorney at Proskauer Rose LLP, the firm that represents Gilman.

"We're very pleased with Justice Yates's decision," Spinogatti said in a telephone interview yesterday.

"We are reviewing the decision and contemplating an appeal," Richard Bamberger, a spokesman for Cuomo, said in an e-mailed statement.

Marsh, based in New York, lost almost half its market value, ousted former chief executive officer Jeffrey Greenberg and settled a related civil lawsuit filed by Spitzer in 2005, paying $850 million to resolve accusations that it rigged bids and took kickbacks from insurers.