Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 34

Today's tip 12B Friday, November 20, 1987 Reno Gazette-Journal The National Institute on Drug Abuse has established a toll free "Drug-Free Workplace Helpline," in service Monday through Friday 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST. For details, call 800-843-4971. Business editor: mike Henderson, 788-6336 Reno lures younger, more affluent tourists Hpfln.

dvnamic By Lisa Ovens Gazette-Journal STATELINE Reno's efforts to lure younger, more affluent tourists are paying off, a leading tourism official said Thursday on the opening day of the Governor's Conference on Tourism. At the same gathering, casino magnate Stephen Wynn told nearly 400 people Nevada has the "perfect environment" for gaming, and that's why he is spending more than $500 million to develop the world's largest casino on the Las Vegas strip. During a keynote speech in the morning, Wynn, chairman of the board of Golden Nugget described Nevada as the "most stable, most perfect environ- Ramada gets OK for drive-up betting The Reno Ramada gained approval Thursday for the area's only drive-up betting window, which hotel officials hope to open this weekend. The concept, approved by the Nevada Gaming Commission at its Las Vegas meeting, involves a gaming license only for football game parlay cards. Motorists would drive up to a window on an alley between the hotel-casino and its convention center, according to Joe Jackson, casino manager.

Remodeling of the casino would be required but there would be no major renovations, Jackson said. Only football betting would be permitted for now, said Jackson, but the Ramada plans to add a full sports book in the future. I I i sffifc-i din Burgess Wynn ment for the growth of tourism in the world." Wynn. 43, who this past summer sold lumping stock I 1 UpwWW "ll.itiiii il.l.mlli'wiilfa i I Mw JhwtH-fil I Jttr0 IT. fi.

FALLING PESO: A young Mexican walks away in apparent frustration Thursday after seeing a posting of the peso selling at 2,500 to the dollar. Mexico halts support of peso product," Burgess said. "We ourselves can't really do anything about that. "We do know the downtown Reno area is the core of our product and no doubt it needs to be improved." Until the downtown makes itself presentable and acceptable to an affluent crowd, Burgess said, the Reno area likely will continue drawing largely older tourists who don't spend much. She added that the RSCVA's research firm, Western International Research, has not done a follow-up study on whether those younger, more affluent tourists See RENO, page 9B 77 Analysts cite exasperation in the market By Rick GladstoneAP NEW YORK Stocks slumped Thursday in what market analysts called a show of exasperation with the failure of Washington negotiators to agree on a budget-deficit reduction one day before automatic cuts take effect.

The bickering between the White House and the Congress on an issue that played a role in the Oct. 19 stock crash dismayed investors and convinced some that any deficit reduction package would be superficial, analysts said. "I think the market is showing a high degree of disgust with the inability of the budget negotiators to come up with anything after 3l2 weeks of effort," said Alfred Goldman, a market strategist at A.G. Edwards Sons a St. Louis-based investment firm.

"It looks like they couldn't even rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic." The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 43.77 points to 1,895.39, putting the widely watched indicator under the 1,900 level for the first time in a week. Broader market barometers also declined sharply. Volume on the New York Stock Exchange totaled a relatively light 157.14 million shares, an indication that many investors were simply waiting for a bud-getndeficit reduction pact before they decided their next move. Wednesday volume also was light at 158.27 million shares. Market attention has been fixed on the deficit talks because they are considered a crucial indicator of the U.S.

government's resolve to stop spending beyond its means. Many economists blame the bulging U.S. budget and trade deficits, combined with signs of a breakdown in American economic cooperation with Japan and West Germany, for inciting the stock collapse last month. "It seems like the people are losing confidence in our exalted leaders down there," said Robert O'Toole, manager of over-the-counter trading at Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc. in New York.

"They can't come to an agreement on something that should have been done a long time ago." In composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, losing issues outnumbered gainers by more than a 3-1 margin, with 1,287 down, 366 up and 337 unchanged. Financial experts say markets are no riskier after crash NEW YORK (AP) Financial executives say the global financial markets are no riskier now than they were before the recent stock market crash, according to a private survey released Wednesday. Executives of top financial services firms in the United States, Britain and Japan also indicated that the massive U.S. budget and trade deficits were the likeliest causes of the Oct. 19 crash.

Louis Harris and Associates conducted the survey for the accounting and consulting firm Coopers Lybrand, interviewing senior executives of 45 major U.S., British and Japanese financial services companies in June, July and August. Harris reinterviewed 23 of the executives by telephone during the first week of November. The executives were divided over whether the crash would speed up or slow the evolution of global, 24-hour financial markets, with about a third giving opinions favoring each trend. However, a majority of those interviewed after the crash said the market turmoil did not make global trading any riskier than it already was. There also was little change in the majority sentiment that the firms would attempt to become major players in the global financial markets, the survey indicated.

More than three-quarters of those surveyed believed that 24-hour markets already existed for foreign exchange, and were nearly a reality for debt securities. 43 the 522-room Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, began construction Monday on the Las Vegas Strip resort. The median age for Reno tourists in the first nine months of this year was 51, four years younger than the median age last year, according to statistics compiled for the Reno-Sparks Convention Visitors Authority. And median household income for those tourists has risen to $35,000 over $34,000 for 1986, said Carol Burgess, marketing director for the RSCVA. But while the RSCVA is attracting a better-off crowd, the effort will be useless unless properties in downtown Reno clean up their acts, she said.

Associated Press The currency lost about 30 percent of its value on Wednesday and an additional 15 percent on Thursday before it began to recover. The peso began plunging in the free market on Wednesday, apparently due to investor worries about uncertainty in the financial markets. Treasury Secretary Gustavo Petri-cioli told Congress the government stopped selling dollars in the free market Wednesday morning, in the face of demand by private companies who decided to make foreign debt payments early and by investors fleeing the Mexican stock market, which See PESO, page 9B foreign industries ing, or selling below fair market value, color television sets in the United States. Tucker said the main purpose of Verity's four-day trip was "to bring a broad message," rather than to discuss specific trade issues, and to "set the stage for a new and constructive approach to trade." Last year, the U.S deficit in trade with Japan reached a record $58.6 billion, according to U.S. figures.

Verity has called Japan's trade surplus with the United States "unsustainable." Ms. Tucker said Verity told Takeshita and others that U.S.-Japan relations were "outstanding, except for one bad apple trade." Asked by businessmen what area of trade he would most like to see improved, Verity said: "No dumping, export prices that reflect exchange market values and an end to absolute market dominance," Tucker reported. "We haven't heard of anything here," said Blackie Evans, executive secretary of the state AFL-CIO, which represents several construction trades unions. Roland Oakes, executive secretary of the Associated General Contractors of Northern Nevada, said he knows of no Japanese construction firms doing business in the Reno area or elsewhere in Nevada, "but Japanese companies are buying American companies, so it's hard to know." He said he had heard of Japanese building competition in San Francisco and Los Angeles but was uncertain to what extent that competition reached. With staff reports Records group sale sends CBS back to its roots By Skip WollenbergAP NEW YORK CBS Inc.

is on the final leg of a journey back to its roots. With the agreement to sell its records group, CBS has nearly completed the restructuring that will leave it only with operations in broadcasting, where it got its start in the late 1920s. The deal also will leave the communications giant with a huge cash reserve that analysts suspect it will invest and may use to acquire television stations. But the analysts are divided on whether CBS is smart to place all its bets on the broadcasting business. On the New York Stock Exchange, CBS stock fell $7.75 a share to $167.50 after rising a share Wednesday on anticipation of the announcement.

CBS capped two months of talks with Sony Corp. by agreeing Wednesday evening to sell its records group to the Japanese consumer electronics concern. The sale is expected to close in early 1988, pending the necessary government approvals, CBS said in a statement. The company's records group has been quite profitable in recent months, propelled by hits from such artists as Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel and the popularity of compact discs. But CBS's president and chief executive, Laurence A.

Tisch, was believed to have favored selling the group if the price were right because of the inherent volatility of the records business. Since last fall, CBS has sold its magazines, book and music publishing operations for a total of about $1.2 billion. The latest sale could swell its cash holdings to between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. The sale would leave CBS with four television stations, the CBS television network, 18 radio stations, two radio net works and a joint venture to sell videocas-settes called CBS-Fox. CBS got its start as a broadcasting concern that William Paley acquired in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System.

The company got into the records business in 1938 when it acquired American Record renaming it Columbia Recording Corp. CBS Records is the world's largest record concern today, employing 10,000 people worldwide with manufacturing facilities in 14 countries and a direct mail unit called Columbia House. Verity tells Japan TOKYO (AP) U.S. Commerce Secretary C. William Verity told Japanese officials Thursday that their aggressive export strategies are wrecking foreign industries, a Commerce Department spokeswoman said.

Verity told Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita that Japan must refrain from its "tendency to organize researchers to go after a key market by using government, industry and the banking system together to create an absolute domination of a foreign domestic market," said spokeswoman Desiree Tucker. "This is not the way to seek export markets," she quoted him as saying. Tucker said Verity added that the consequence of such trading practices was the destruction of domestic industries abroad. She said Verity stressed that Japan should assume more responsibility and work with the United States "toward mutual leadership in the world." Japanese builders NEW YORK (AP) While the U.S. government presses Japan to open its market more to U.S.

construction firms, well-financed Japanese companies are doing a booming business in the United States. Japanese companies are combining Japanese financial muscle with hair-thin profit margins to underbid American companies on skyscrapers in Manhattan, hotels in Hawaii and auto plants in the Midwest. The incursion, though still small, has been so rapid it already is being compared with Japanese successes in fields such as consumer electronics and automobiles. "Is the construction industry where Judge jilts Liz's 'Passion' NEW YORK There's no room for "Elizabeth Taylor's Passion" in the nation's finer department stores, a federal judge ruled Thursday in a trademark dispute between the movie star's perfume line and one marketed by a French firm. U.S.

District Judge Robert W. Sweet of Manhattan granted a request by Annick Goutal Inc. for an injunction against marketing a perfume called "Elizabeth Taylor's Passion" at stores like Bergdorf-Goodman, Nieman-Marcus, I. Magnum, Henri Bendel or others "of comparable quality." He left it to the opposing sides to "agree upon the stores" covered by the limited injunction. Taylor's lawyer, Berj A.

Terzian, said he had not seen Sweet's opinion and "I'm not going to comment without seeing it." Gillette forms new units BOSTON The Gillette Co. on Thursday announced the creation of two new operating units in what company officials say is an effort to strengthen Gillette's markets in North America and Europe. The new units, Gillette North Atlantic and Gillette International Diversified Operations, replace three former Gillette units, Gillette North America, Gillette International and Diversified Operations. The retirements of two key Gillette executives were also announced Thursday. Joseph F.

Turley, 62, Gillette's president and chief operating officer, will retire in April. The retirement of Rodney S. Mills, 54, executive vice president of Gillette International, will be effective at the end of this year. Judge sets Texaco date WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. A federal judge ruled Thursday that the merger of the two creditors committees in the Texaco bankruptcy case must occur by Dec.

18, but gave the industry committee the right to appeal his decision ordering the merger. Last week, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Howard Schwartzberg ordered the industry committee, which represented oil industry companies, to disband and become part of the committee representing general unsecured creditors. The committees were formed shortly after Texaco, the third-largest oil company in the U.S., filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law. The April filing stemmed from a $10.53 billion judgment awarded to rival Pennzoil Co.

People Johnson Frediani JAMES D. JOHNSON has been named marketing director for the Reno Hilton. Johnson has worked in marketing and public relations at ski resorts in Colorado, serving as executive director for the Ski Tahoe Tourism Association. He most recently was director of market development for Harrah's Reno. WAYNE A.

FREDIANI has been appointed director of membership and communication for the Nevada Motor Transport Association and the Nevada Franchised Auto Dealers Association headquartered in Sparks. Frediani was formerly with Harrah's Reno in the human resources department. Frediani received his degree in business administration from the University of Nevada-Reno in 1972. Wire service and staff reports 7ri 2tM Mia I I MEXICO CITY (AP) The peso plunged for the second straight day Thursday, then recovered some ground. Officials said the government had halted its free-market support of the currency to prevent a substantial drain on Mexico's international reserves.

The government also said the tumbling peso should not worsen Mexico's heated inflation, which already was expected to reach a record 140 percent this year. At the close of Thursday's trading, one chain of private exchange houses bought dollars for 2,100 pesos apiece and sold them for 2,500 pesos. However, few had dollars to sell. its practices hurt In meetings with Japanese government and business leaders, Verity also expressed "concern that Japanese people and the government in particular have lost credibility," Tucker said. "The perception now is that the Japanese government says it will open up a particular market segment and then delays and delays without taking action," she quoted him as saying.

He said it was "important that the Japanese rectify this perception problem," the spokeswoman added. Verity, who arrived Wednesday for his first overseas visit since being sworn in on Oct. 19 as commerce secretary, also met separately with International Trade and Industry Minister Hajime Tamura, Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno and a group of business leaders. His visit comes at a time of renewed tension in U.S.-Japan trade relations following the Commerce Department's ruling that Japanese companies are dump- garnering big share of U.S. market Detroit was 20 years ago?" asked Barbara T.

Alexander, a managing director for the investment firm Salomon Brothers in a report earlier this year. Construction and management contracts won by Japanese companies in the United States have risen from less than $50 million in 1981 to billion last year and could approach $3 billion this year, according to International Construction Week newsletter. "It's hard to walk around midtown (Manhattan) without seeing Kumagai Gumi signs," said Charles Pinyan, chief editor of the newsletter, which surveys 250 construction companies worldwide. But the phenomenon has not yet come to Nevada..