October 9, 1986 Poughkeepsie Journal - 7A Business Briefcase From staff and wire reports Dow 1,803.85 +19.40 S&P 500 236.68 +2.27 NYSE 136.29 , +1.15 AMEX 264.00 +1.04 Gold $437.50 -4.00 IBM 127⅜ -¾ Companies SOFCO INC., a manufacturer of paper products, is expanding into plastic cups. •The new venture will bring 30 new jobs to the Schenectady County community. F.W. WOOLWORTH CO. board of directors elected Harold E. Sells, president and chief operating officer, to succeed John W. Lynn as chairman and chief executive officer. The change is to take place when Lynn retires at age 65 on Jan. 31. NYNEX ANNOUNCED a new corporate advertising campaign that will show the many ways NYNEX can meet customers' information and communications needs. Carrying the tagline, "'The answer is NYNEX," the new print' and TV advertising highlights its entire range of communications and information services. PITTSBURGH OFFICIALS, still smarting over the loss of Gulf Corp. and about 1,600 jobs two years ago, are urging USX Corp. 1 to fight a takeover attempt by financier Carl ( C. Icahn. BANKAMERICA CORP. remained silent on a $2.7 billion merger proposal made by First Interstate Bancorp., which is disputing contentions that its offer is undervalued. SEPARATELY, a BankAmerica spokesman said the company did not wish to sell its Seafirst Corp. subsidiary, a unit that Security Pacific Corp. has said it might be interested in acquiring. MOST MAJOR U.S. AIRLINES have reported double-digit increases in passenger traffic for September, confirming Wall Street analysts' optimistic projections for the fall travel season. Only People Express Airlines Inc. and Pan American World Airways Inc. have reported reduced traffic. CBS INC. said it had third-quarter net income of $28.6 million compared with a loss of $114.1 million in the same period a year ago. But the broacasting company said its profit from continuing operations declined 2 percent in the latest period. Acquisitions INVESTORS ARE QUESTIONING whether corporate raider Carl Icahn will follow through on his $8 billion cash offer for USX Corp., but they agree that major changes are all but inevitable at the No. 1 steelmaker. CAMPEAU CORP. wasn't talking but retail analysts said they didn't expect the Canadian developer to come back with a sweetened, hostile bid for Allied Stores Corp., now that Allied has agreed to be acquired by the nation's largest mall developer in a deal valued at $3.55 billion. Investor ASHER B. EDELMAN requested meeting with the board of Lucky Stores Inc. before the company proceeded with what 1 he said was the planned sale of its Gemco department stores division for an estimated $700 million. Labor. BURROUGHS CORP. plans to cut about 9,600 jobs worldwide by the end of the year at Burroughs and at Sperry Corp., the rival computer maker it acquired last month for $4.8 billion. The INDEPENDENT FEDERATION of Flight Attendants, who struck Trans World Airlines earlier this year, has filed suit charging the airline with harassing its representatives and violating its contract. UNION MEMBERS REPRESENTING 40,000 Boeing Co. machinists in three states approved a three-year contract that labor leaders said offered better pay than a pact the workers rejected last week. UNITED STEELWORKERS union, members have begun blockading railroad tracks outside USX Corp.'s Tarben chemicals plant to prevent shipment of pitch and chemicals. Washington EMPLOYERS ANTICIPATE that wage increases in the next year will average about 5 percent, down from 5.3 percent in 1985-86. A survey indicated that only professionals, middie-level supervisors and managers can expect larger increases than last year. THE NATION'S CITIES added 26,857 fulltime workers to their payrolls last year, bringing ! the total of city employees to 2,467,000. It was the third straight year of increasing city employment, following declines in 1981 and 1982 after the elimination of the federally funded Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. A COMPROMISE PLAN TO SELL government-owned Conrail in a public stock offering offered hope that a House-Senate committee might resolve its differences over how best to unload the railroad. International KUWAIT STOOD ALONE in publicly rejecting an OPEC proposal, backed- by a majority of the members, to extend a temporary limit ón cartel oil production to the end of the year. IRISH CRYSTAL MAKER Waterford Glass offered $358 million for English china producer Wedgwood PLC, a deal that would create the one of world's largest fine-tableware companiés. Money THE DOLLAR FELL against all key European currencies except the embattled British pound in thin trading. Gold prices rose in London but were unchanged in Zurich. BOND PRICES FELL. An opening surge in oil prices, together with renewed indications that Japan and West Germany would not cut their interest rates any time soon, helped push the bond market down, one analyst said. Rojon's final assets put on auction block PUBLIC AUCTION MILLION DOLLAR OF DIRECTORS MAJOR 5 Inc. Rojon AUCTION Poughkeepsie, NY Electronics, Avenue, 253 North OCT. 21, 1986 TUESDAY CAPITAL ASSETS TO A BEGIN AUCTION PROMPTLY AT 10:00 Rojon is distributing glossy auction brochures nationwide. I Settlement expected on stalled project •By Bernie Kohn Journal business writer A settlement may be in the offing to get a stalled City of Poughkeepsie office project moving again. A Westchester County judge is set to issue an order Tuesday that would end litigation between David Meiselman and Merv Blank, the co of Jefferson Plaza on Church Street. The principals would comment on what the order will state. Meiselman, a Poughkeepsie attorney, and Blank, a Putnam County developer, have been feuding since mid-summer on who is the proper owner of the two buildings within Jefferson Plaza and three other properties in •Putnam and Westchester counties. The first Jefferson Plaza building was completed and occupied this year, but construction on the 30,000-square-" foot second stage stopped when legal action began in June. Philip Shatz, the court -appointed trustee empowered to resolve the said attorneys for both sides met in White Plains earlier this week to discuss a solution. He. said state Supreme Court Justice Vincent Gurahian indicated he would sign some type of order on Tuesday. The parties involved in the suit have been under pressure from the City of Poughkeepsie to resolve it quickly. Because the site of Jefferson Plaza was formerly owned by the Poughkeepsie Urban Renewal Agency, the city retained the power to repossess the property if the project was not completed on time. Mayor Journal/Ken Bizzigoni The skeleton on the idle construction site of Jefferson Plaza Park detracts from the completed building (background). Thomas Aposporos said the city has given Aposporos said he was pleased to hear of bribery case in Putnam County. By Bernie Kohn Journal business writer In what may be the first event of its type in the country, the remaining assets of. Ro-. jon Electronics Inc. will be sold at auction on Tuesday, Oct. 21. Rojon has hired two nationally known. auctioneers to liquidate all remaining inventory, equipment, vehicles and furniture; as well as the 64,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on North Grand Avenue. The on-site auction will start at 10 a.m. and maytake from eight to 10 hours. The building will be auctioned off separately at noon. Rojon manufactured electronic cables and harnesses for the computer and communications industries for 19 years until closing several weeks ago. Its primary customer was IBM. The company once employed nearly 400 people, about 290 of them in Poughkeepsie, but had been battered by the computer industry slump. "Many light industry and high-tech buildings have been sold at auction, but I'm not aware of an action of this. type being employed, where capital assets and buildings are sold on the same day," said Nathan Wolfstein, national sales and marketing director of Larry Latham Auctioneers in Houston, Texas. The Latham firm will conduct the sale of the building. Ross-Dove Co. of San Mateo,. Calif., will conduct the sale of other assets. According to the auctioneers, the Rojon plant and grounds were recently appraised at just under $3, million, and several hundred thousand dollars worth of assets remain inside the facility. The auctioneers are promoting the sale nationwide through a full-color, 10-page brochure. They expect participants to include everyone from. Rojon's competitors, to high-tech companies looking to put new facilities in the Hudson Valley, to small businessmen just wanting to pick up some bargains in office furniture. Ross Dove, president of Ross-Dove Co., said his firm specializes• in helping Silicon Valley high-tech companies get rid of excess' inventory. He said his firm recently helped Rojon liquidate assets of its Campbell, Calif., manufacturing facility. "This is becoming more and more common, because the return to shareholders or creditors is immediate and very good," Dove said from his California office. "The fact that there is so much sold in one day generates a lot of cash, and funds See ROJON, page 9A Shatz two man and developer "We think a chance," it's prudent IBM to cut back jobs at its headquarters NEW YORK (AP) - IBM said Wednesday it plans to cut several hundred jobs from the headquarters staffs of its manufacturing and development groups when the staffs are consolidated in a new office complex in the Westchester County, N.Y., town of Somers, which is scheduled to open in 1988. All employees whose jobs are cut will be offered positions elsewhere in IBM, the company said. Most of the employees affected work nearby in White Plains, N.Y.; Montvale, N.J.; and Danbury, Conn., IBM said. IBM is based in Armonk, also in Westchester County. IBM stock, which plunged $5.37½ a share Tuesday following its warning about slow business, fell an additional 62½ cents a share Wednesday to $127.50 on the Big Board. The Burroughs retirement incentives are for employees in selected U.S. organizations who are 55 or older and are credited with a minimum of 15 years of service in either company's retirement program, Burroughs said. It said employees would be given the details of the incentives over the next several days. Kenyon said he did not know if the company planned to take a charge against earnings because of the costs of cutting jobs. Blumenthal has set. a target of earning $8 to $9 per share next year and cutting costs by $150 million, and the only way that can be done is by cutting large numbers of jobs, said George Podrasky, an analyst for Duff & Phelps Inc. in Chicago. Command passenger count increases 56% NEW HACKENSACK - Command Airways said it carried 56 percent more passengers in September than in the same month a year earlier, and posted strong gains in other measures of performance. The passenger count of 31,982 ended three consecutive months of new records, but included three new daily records, the Poughkeepsie-based commuter carrier said. In addition, Command posted a load factor of 40.4 percent; compared with 36.5 a year earlier. Load factor is the percentage of seats occupied by paying passengers, and is a key indicator of profitability. And revenue passenger miles - the number of passengers multiplied by the distance each was flown increased 48 percent. Kingsley G. Morse, chairman and president, termed the airline's traffic "strong as battery acid." But he added that the gains from a year earlier were helped by last year's poor September, when traffic was effected by Hurricane Gloria and two religious holidays that fall in October this year. For the fiscal year to date, Command's traffic is up 35 percent from a year earlier, and load factor is 1.1 percent higher. Canada warns U.S. on trade duty Knight-Ridder Newspapers OTTAWA, Canada Canada's international trade minister has warned that if the United States imposes a new duty on Canadian softwood lumber imports, the ongoing talks to liberalize trade between the two countries could be jeopardized. months to either bring Meisel- a possible settlement, but added, "'We will In a letter to Aposporos, Meiselman Blank together, or find a third move forward as we indicated unless we stated he and Blank then agreed to split up - under threat of repossession. are given valid reasons not to press." because Blank's involvement in the bribery it's prudent to give him (Shatz) The problems between Meiselman and case had made it difficult for the duo to Aposporos said. "We also think Blank began in June, when Blank was deal with bankers, real estate agents, and to tell him to hurry up." named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a potential clients. $10 Tra Trade-In! 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