Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post
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From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com
Subject: COMPANIES<
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 04:42:06 EST
Message-ID: <43.1992Nov12.044207@AmeriCast.com>

COMPANIES<

 Northwest Airlines' unions said they expect to announce by
week's end an agreement about joint contract concessions in ex-
change for an equity stake in the company.<AT&T signed an agree-
ment to re-establish direct telephone links between the United
States and Vietnam, the official Vietnam News Agency said.
Although few details were released, the agreement appeared to be
the biggest business deal with Vietnam by an American company in
almost 20 years and reflected a recent thaw in
relations.<MasterCard is developing a calling card program under
which customers could use the credit card to make telephone calls
from any phone in the United States, regardless of which long-
distance phone company carries the call.<Xerox introduced a
copier paper that allows color photographs or designs to be
transferred within minutes to T-shirts, canvas or other fabrics
in a process that the company said is quicker and cheaper than
silk-screening methods.<GM's offering of $1 billion of "prefer-
ence" stock was assigned a triple-B-plus rating by Standard &
Poor's, meaning it categorizes the stock as lower-medium invest-
ment grade.<Bethlehem Steel said Ispat Group, an investment firm
from Calcutta, is considering buying most of its Bar, Rod & Wire
Division, except the Johnstown wire mill, which is being sold to
TMB Industries in Chicago.<NBC, IBM and NuMedia formally an-
nounced a test of a "news-on-demand" video system for personal
computers. NBC Desktop News will provide corporate and government
users with updated business and financial news clips that can be
retrieved, viewed and stored using an office computer. NuMedia is
based in Alexandria.<U.S. Steel Group plans to idle one of the
two blast furnaces at its Edgar Thomson plant outside Pittsburgh
for two weeks in December. The company cited reduced orders and
said some of its customers plan to idle factories during the
holidays.<Banc One is in talks with some major brokerage com-
panies about forming an alliance to market investment products
similar to the linkup established recently by NationsBank and
Dean Witter, according to a report in the American Banker, a New
York-based newspaper that covers the banking industry.<Borden,
which recently announced a massive consolidation of operations,
said it was narrowing its roster of advertising agencies for its
dairy products and pasta businesses.<One of the ad agencies being
dismissed, Tracy-Locke-DDB Needham in Dallas, had worked for Bor-
den for all but two of the past 60 years, predating by four years
the company's adoption of Elsie the Cow as its
trademark.<Computer Associates International, whose licensing
terms have been criticized by customers, says it will offer a
fixed-price alternative to graduated tier pricing on its business
software.<ACQUISITIONS<Drypers and UltraCare Products, two makers
of disposable diapers, are merging to form a company that will
make 1 billion diapers a year. The exact terms of the merger
weren't disclosed. It was financed with a $75 million private
placement in senior notes and refinanced existing
debt.<INTERNATIONAL<Cable and Wireless PLC of London said it will
sell a big stake in Mercury Communications Ltd., a British tele-
phone operator, for $730 million to BCE Inc., the owner of Bell
Canada Enterprises.<REGULATION<The Resolution Trust Corp. said it
will auction off 56 branches of HomeFed Bank, the failed San
Diego thrift, as well as $1.2 billion in home mortgages. The RTC
plans to sell the rest of the thrift later.<EARNINGS<Federated
Department Stores, which emerged from bankruptcy protection early
this year, reported a third-quarter profit of $31.6 million, com-
pared with a loss of $61 million a year ago. Federated operates
more than 220 department stores in 27 states, including Abraham &
Straus, Bloomingdale's, Burdines, Goldsmith's, Jordan Marsh, La-
zarus, Rich's and Stern's.<Turner Broadcasting System reported a
69 percent increase in third-quarter earnings, helped by the
strong showing of baseball's Atlanta Braves, which Turner
owns.<Siemens, Europe's largest electrical engineering firm, re-
ported a 9 percent rise in profit for the year ended Sept.
30.<Quaker Oats said its earnings rose 47 percent in its fiscal
first quarter ended in September.<Berlitz International said its
profit fell 87.7 percent, to $700,000, in the third
quarter.<PEOPLE<Two suspected computer hackers were charged with
felonies for snooping into computer networks used by aerospace
giant Boeing and federal courts. The two suspects, University of
Washington student Matthew Anderson, 19, and George Katsaniotis,
21, of Seattle, each face one count of conspiracy to defraud the
United States, FBI officials said.<David L. Stone, a Digital
Equipment executive who won praise for guiding the computer
company's software strategy, resigned after apparently losing
some authority in recent management reorganizations. Stone, who
worked at Digital for 22 years, will join AT&T's software busi-
ness.<<02:34 11-12C9999-----

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