The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 31

Finance The Indianapolis Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1985 PAGE 31 '2020' turns eye Boxy, no-frills $3,990 Yugo car sells sight unseen i The p'(i Tape u4SsJ to short ASSOCIATED PRESS FROM STAR WIRE SERVICES sellers New York It's TV vs. the Big 3 car sales slin short seller the professional Wall Streeter betting on lower rather than higher stock prices in an Big Three car sales have en tered a broad but gradual decline that could force production cuts in coming months and lead even upcoming nationwide television show. And the star of the show is said Boston The Yugo, a square little car with a'-J. bargain-basement price, is arriving in America and dealers said Tuesday that demand for the $3,990 Yugoslavian import is so high that customers are putting down cash without even a test drive. Dealers in Michigan.

Florida and Massachusetts'' said they have been bombarded with requests for the 137-inch-long subcompact, the cheapest new car in America, selling for about $1,000 less than its; nearest competitor, the Sprint, a minicar from Japan. "I've been in the car business my whole life, 25 years, and this is the most popular car I've People are just buying it from a picture in a brochure," said Richard Loehr a dealer in Kalamazoo, who expected his first Yugo, shipment Tuesday. "We've never had a car like this." 5 to be none other than James Chanos, the analyst who foresaw the collapse of Baldwin-United tually to more assembly plant closings, many economists and auto industry experts believe. Ironically, the dropoff in sales by the U.S.-based auto companies the one-time high-flying insurance and financial goliath that went into Chapter XI (voluntary bank comes amid continued strength ruptcy) in early 1983. But first, here are some insights in the overall car market.

No recession is on the immediate horizon, most forecasters say, even though 1985 marks the third consecutive year of rising sales after the sharp 1979 82 downturn. Loehr said he has received deposits on orders for 124 Yugos, which will take him six months to- fill, and hundreds ot customers nave visueu uhh 'If there is an easing (in sales) showroom to look at photographs of the Rastprn European car marketed in America. we see it in the latter part of Dan DORFMAN 1986, said CP. King, Nissans top U.S. executive.

Gannett bid foreseen into Chanos' impact on Wall Street. Last Thursday, the shares of Gannett publisher of USA Lotus Development, a well-regarded Today and 85 other daily news In Winter rarK. Lune rouer uuugc sold 11 Yugos sight unseen, and has a waiting of 140 customers. "When people see the price, they find it a little, hard to believe," said sales manager Bill Spegele. Jonas Halperin, senior vice president of Yugoi America Inc.

of Montvale, N.J., said about 40,000 Yugos will be shipped to 160 dealers nationwide in the next 12 months. The company, the brainchild of-American entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin, hopes to deliver 360,000 Yugos to 277 U.S. dealers by 1989. "We got 10 of them Saturday, and not a single1 one is left," said Bruno Nardelli, a Boston-area dealer. rMiM ntr -m iwr MmiWiMmir Wi iiii mm mmwmmimfa'1tmta ASSOCIATED PRESS papers, probably will offer to buy the Evening News Association this week, a major shareholder in the family-owned ENA said Tuesday.

"I think there's a very Girl stuff for girls Lucy Ewell holds two of the computer computer games on the market seemed to games she and another woman designed be steered toward boys and men. They now for marketing after they concluded that the produce and sell their games for girls. manufacturer of computer software, were tagged for a loss of VA points as they fell to 2414 on a brisk turnover of over 400,000 shares. Only a day earlier, Microsoft, a Lotus competitor, announced a deal with IBM for the joint development of software for IBM's desktop computers. So the Lotus loss, on the face of it, was not unexpected.

But to the Wall Street pros in the know, it wasn't the IBM deal that chiefly bombed Lotus stock, but our high probability that they (Gannett) will." Ralph H. Booth II said when asked if he expected Gan nett to propose such a deal at a meeting of ENA directors today. "We would certainly be pleased California bank fined $2.25 million! to see Gannett make an offer. said Booth, president of Booth American which owns nearly 5 percent of ENA's shares. Productivity up 1 The productivity of 83.4 million American workers off the farm improved 1 percent in the April-June quarter, a sharp upward revision from the original figures, the Labor Department said.

The nounced smaller civil penalties against four Nel York City banks for reporting violations. Assistant Treasury Secretary John M. Walk er Jr. said the civil penalty imposed on Crocker was larger because "the extremely serious na lure of Crocker's violations warranted a suft stantially more severe penalty than in prior cases." "Although there is no evidence that the banj: itself deliberately engaged in money laundering Crocker's reporting failures were systemic and pervasive," Walker said at a news conference. Walker said a full investigation would be undertaken by the Internal Revenue Service to? see if criminal charges should be filed agains' the bank or any individual employees.

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER ASSOCIATED PRESS Washington The government announced Tuesday it had imposed a record $2.25 million in penalties against Crocker National Bank of San Francisco for failing to report almost $4 billion in cash transactions as required by law. Treasury Department officials said the bank, the country's 11th largest, had committed 7,877 reporting violations from 1980 through 1984. Officials said the violations were uncovered during a routine audit of the bank last October and that the bank's new management had cooperated with the investigation. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks are required by law to report all cash transactions 3 CROCKER BW1K above $10,000. The law is designed to give federal law enforcement officials a tool to investigate cases involving drug deals, corruption and organized crime.

The Crocker case marked the sixth time this year that the government has penalized banks for failure to report under the law. The Bank of Boston on Feb. 7 pleaded guilty to a felony charge of failing to report $1.22 billion in cash transactions with nine foreign banks and agreed to pay a $500,000 fine. In June, the Treasury Department an measure of output per hours, one of the fundamental influences on the standard of living and infla tion, originally was- reported to be up just 0.5 percent. During the first quarter productivity fell 6.1 Dcrccnt.

The improvement was mainly because pay, adjusted for Robotics center still in need of financing 1 inflation, went down 0.8 percent, meanine workers turned out more product for less money. U.S. shuts out states The Federal Trade Commis sinn cannot share with state au nues and we're confident one of them will worl? and INFAC will happen this year." Among the recent businesses signing letter of intent are Cybotech Division of Ransburg International Laser Machines Corp. ami Industrial Laser Technologies all of Ihi dianapolis; SEA Group Inc. and PIAB USA Iritf in Carmel, Air Equipment and Engineering Inf of Greenwood and Computer Age Engineering Inc.

in Marion. Other companies include Seiko Instrument USA Torrance, Teknowledge Infc! Minneapolis: Automatix Billcrica. Mas Pacline Georgetown, Ontario; Graco bots Minneapolis, and Square Mill waukee. thorities the confidential data it Construction Co. INFAC officials are working with New York banking giant Citicorp to secure financing, said David H.

Downing, INFAC marketing director. Citcorp is acting as a placing agent for permanent financing, he said, soliciting interest from the bank's institutional clients. Downing said the main snags in securing financing are that the proposed center would be the nation's only center devoted to industrial robotics and other factory automation processes, and because it is a "single use" facility. As a result, he said, lenders have difficulty evaluating the financial soundness of the proposal. But.

he said, "we're pursuing several ave Developers of INFAC, the planned robotics exposition and education center, have received letters of intent from 25 additional companies since May but are still attempting to work out financing for the project, officials said Tuesday. Fifty-eight firms have signed letters of intent, representing about 50 percent of the available space, up from 35 percent in May. INFAC, which stands for International Flexible Automation Center, was announced in August 1983 but delays in securing financing have prevented the start of construction. Plans call for the $70 million facility to be located near the Indiana Convention Center. The project is headed by a partnership led by James M.

Wilhclm, president of F.A. Wilhelm ohtains from corporations in volved in major mergers, a federal appeals court has ruled. Re-versine a lower court in Connecticut, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a provision in the Hart-Scott Rodino Antitrust Im-nrovements Act. designed to American Fletcher to buy largest Hendricks bank keep the confidential data out of the hands of the general public, also applies to state attorneys general who seek the information while preparing their own ami trust cases.

man Chanos. Lotus lost another half a point on Friday; so all told, more than $32 million of market value was wiped out in just two days. Chanos, 27, had simply put out the word to his institutional clients that he had turned sour on the company. Chanos had previous concerns about Lotus, given the rising competition besetting the company's hot product a computer spreadsheet software package. But it took the IBM-Microsoft deal to fire him into action.

Not only did he tell clients to dump Lotus stock, but he urged them to sell it short. That puts added pressure on the security by heightening the amount of shares for sale. Chanos is a vice president and analyst at Deutsche Bank Capital a small brokerage firm and a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest banking institution. A graduate of Yale University at 24, Chanos joined Deutsche Bank in October 1983 after having uncovered the Baldwin-United fiasco as an analyst at Gilford Securities, a small institutionally oriented brokerage firm. Whether Chanos is right or wrong on Lotus is anybody's guess.

But even more intriguing is that Chanos' oft repeated recommendations to short sellers which in the past have resulted in sharp declines in such stocks as Coleco. Tandy, Integrated Resources and MCI Communications will come under a TV microscope in an upcoming segment of ABC's widely watched 2020. And that segment, according to sources who've been interviewed by 2020. will deal with a highly explo-sive question, namely whether the financial press is being manipulated by shortscllcrs to drive down stock prices. In brief, the question will be raised, I'm told, as to whether short sellers are in effect using the press by taking sizable "short" positions in a company's shares and then encouraging the press to write negatively about that company's prospects.

Usually the information is already out but often not to the investment public at large. So the short seller feeds the bad news to a reporter, holding out as an incentive the prospects of a controversial, incisive story containing information unknown to most investors. If the short seller manages to sell the idea and the story is written up in a financial publication with clout, the possibility arises that it could depress the stock price. And thus the short seller winds up making money. Many of the short sellers either manage or work for what's called "hedge funds." These are funds that both buy stocks and sell stocks short.

In effect, they're selling short part of their portfolio as a way of protecting themselves against a declining market. Chanos confirms that he's held several conversations with 2020 staffers, but he told me he has refused to be interviewed on camera. "They (2020) seem to think there's a conspiracy by short sellers to use the press and since I deal with a lot of short sellers. I seem to be the focus of attention." he says. ins NEWS AMERICA SYNDICATE S.

Asia buying more The government predicts U.S. aericultural sales to South Asia with our state's largest bank holding company," Ralph E. Daum. president of First American National, said in the statement. IjJ The acquisition, valued at $D5 per share, awaits stockholder at)d regulatory approval.

American Fletcher's first acquj sition under the new banking lawfi was of Union Bank and Trust Co.JJn Johnson County. American Fletcher also Shelby National Bank, which it toQk over last year after that bank wjs declared insolvent. to First American National because it is "highly successful," an American Fletcher spokesman said. Frank E. McKinncy chair man of American Fletcher said in a written statement that the takeover by his bank will give the Plainfield bank "a wider range of banking and investment advantages." Under the agreement.

First American National will become a subsidiary of American Fletcher but will retain current management and its name. "We are fortunate in affiliating were liberalized July 1. First American National, founded in 1903. ranks as the largest bank in Hendricks County, with five of fices and $116 million in assets. American Fletcher, the state's largest bank-holding company with $3.5 billion in assets, was attracted moving here would be necessary.

The company blamed a slowdown in the air conditioning business because of cool weather. will increase by 19 percent in the coming fiscal year, largely because of heavy wheat sales to Pakistan. The increase will place South Asian purchases of U.S. farm goods at about $760 million in fiscal 1986. the Agriculture Department said Monday.

In its South Asia uutiooK ana auuauon Summarv. the department's Eco Discount brokerage services THE AFNB ADVANTAGE. nomic Research Service said India and Pakistan are likely to increase their edible oil imports in fiscal 1986. But no signficant gains are expected for US. soybean oil because of the stiff competition from palm oil marketed WITH American Fletcher Corp.

announced Tuesday it has agreed to buy the parent company of First American National Bank in Plain-field for $14.1 million. The acquisition would be the second for American Fletcher since state banking laws on takeovers Air-cooling lin Carrier Corp. is transferring production of an air-conditioner line from Syracuse. N.Y.. to its BDP Co.

subsidiary in Indianapolis. BDP will begin producing packaged terminal air-conditioners large room air conditioners often used in such places as motels when the move is completed in early 1986. The move is expected to result in a "minimal" increase in employment in Indianapolis, Carrier spokeswoman Kathleen Keegan said Tuesday. She said the move was "an extension of a restructuring under way at Carrier to improve the company's overall competitiveness." Indianapolis was chosen as the site for production because it is more centrally located than Syracuse to the company's customers and because BDP has the capacity and manufacturing processes necessary, she said. BDP now employs about 1.200 people.

Carrier, a subsidiary of United Technologies is moving production of room air conditioners to Brazil. and commercial air-handling systems to Little Rock. Ark. Carrier had earlier announced it would lay off nearly 1,100 employees and said this week that further layoffs, numbering less than 200, by other nations. Take your own investment iijvice mul save up to 70 in brokerage commissions while taking advantage of; Self-directed Brokerage IRAs.

Stock Corporate Bond Trading. Margin Accounts Options Trading. Free Security Safekeeping (in street name). Soviets' word shaky Agriculture Secretary John Block said he has no "absolute AW guarantees" the Soviet Union will fulfill its commitment to buy an For more information, visit any of our full-service Banking Centers or call; 317639-7897 or toll-free 1-800-233-2347. other 1.1 million tons of wheat this year.

Block, who arrived Sunday for a six day visit, told rnnorters he reminded the Sovi ets of their commitment under a AMERICAN FLETCHER NATIONAL BANK AFNB 1983 trade aerecment to buy an other 1.1 million tons of wheat before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. "I made it clear that we view this as important." he said, "I cannot tell vou if they will buy it or not. I do not have any absolute guarantees. iW'tint trnwMin t.r eiit will Iv tAniitttl iiul pf" ilivnunnl IViuIJmmi.

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