The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page 35

behgur Bryan is a small and midsize software bee lnvemmg, ijcj sanascuip- it uapptna cvuj ev- me ucat uimg ujuui noug -cmo, fjci-- t-ocu Inside: Business Calendar Maryland Interest Rates Municipal Bonds Economic Indicators THESSUN March 23, 1998 Page llcX BUSIN Steel Broadcasting Monday Bloomberg Maryland Index 100 Maryland-based public companies Pioneering TV digitally Bethlehem 1 "VrO joins rise in steel stocks Bethlehem Steel st0ckmiee bUJtKpiiLe i Video captains: Leading Sinclair's conversion to digital broadcasting are Nat Ostroff (left), vice president for new technology, and Del Parks, vice president for engineering. Entrepreneurship Future franchisees nurtured by college outreach program 245 235 225 215 I 205 i 185 97 98 500 Index 1100 1050 1000? 950 I I 900 850 "97 -98 SOURCE: Bloomberg News SUN STAFF On THE Horizon Today Treasury Department auctions three- and six-month notes. Tomorrow Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on future of Amtrak. Wednesday Commerce Department reports February durable-goods orders. The average forecast is for a decline of 0.2 percent.

National Association of Realtors releases existing home sales for February. The average forecast is 4.43 million. Thursday Commerce Department reports its final estimate of economic growth for the fourth quarter. The average forecast is for growth of 3.9 percent at an annual rate. Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims.

Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates. Friday Commerce Department reports on personal income and spending for February. The average forecast is for gains of 0.6 percent in income and 0.5 percent in spending. Bankrupt 12c Leases 12c Bonds 12c Meetings 14c Calendar 14c People 12c Computers 14c Rates 12c The small firm "NAROWHOUSEon West Madison Street in Baltimore, a speck of a firm called Bengur Bryan Co. is pumping out deals.

It is raising $25 1 Closing prices $16 14: 12 10 6 -Jan. 2 Mar. 20 SOURCE: Bloomberg News SUN STAPP LTV up 13 percent. Scott Morrison, an industry analyst for Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette, said old-line steelmakers may have to combine to battle lower-cost minimills, which use inexpensive scrap metal as raw material and less expensive nonunion labor. "I think the landscape will change," he said.

Bethlehem, which employs about 5,300 at its Sparrows Point plant in eastern Baltimore County, already has an acquisition in the works. It will pay $740 million for Lukens Ir e. of Coatsville, Pa. As a result of the deal, Bethlehem early next year will close its Sparrows Point plate mill, which employs about 400. Analysts said speculation of additional consolidation is only part of the reason for the in- See Steel, 12c It's a plane: A man crosses the street in Kowloon, seemingly unaware of the hugejetliner roaring across the sky.

But those on the ground routinely pause in conversations until the deafening noise moves away, and another plane follows in a minute or two. BARBARA HADDOCK TAYLOR SUN STAFF that the model might work in El Paso to get people into business with a higher probability of success." The thinking, in part, was that franchises individually owned businesses supported by a larger corporation have a lower failure rate than individual start-up businesses. Franchises are steadily becoming a larger part of the retail market. Annual sales are ex- See Franchises, 13c Transportation ifc. I Testing: Baltimore's Sinclair Broadcast Group claims to ha ve found a way to make digitally 'pay-multicasting.

By Mark Ribbing SUN STAFF In the battle over the future of television, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. is sticking to its guns. The Baltimore-based broadcaster has begun transmitting trial signals on digital television and will soon begin demonstrations of the technology. Sinclair's strategy for entering the high-stakes digital market has drawn some criticism and is being watched closely by an industry that is still unsure about just how to use the new technology. "Sinclair's at the leading edge of this story," said Harry J.

DeMott, an analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. "The market will decide if they're right or not." Like other television broadcasters nationwide, Sinclair received federal licenses in April to transmit digital signals that offer better sound and picture quality than current analog broadcasting. There has been disagreement, though, over what to do with those signals. A broadcaster could use its digital capacity to put out one extremely sharp high-definition television, or HDTV, channel. Or, it could chop one channel into four or five, an approach called mul ticasting.

While digital multicasting would offer a better picture than analog, it wouldn't have quite the same quality as HDTV. However, multicast ing would give broadcasters more channels and, therefore, more ways to derive advertising or subscription revenue from digital TV. Sinclair has left no doubt about which way it is leaning. "We, as a broadcaster, don't see how HDTV is a viable economic entity in the foreseeable future," said Nat Ostroff, Sinclair's vice president for new technology. Multicasting, by contrast, offers "the one business model that you can put numbers on and get a return on your investment, ostroii said.

For example, Ostroff said Sinclair might use multicasting to offer subscription TV services that would compete with cable. Some analysts agree that multicasting holds more financial promise than HDTV, at least for now. "The economics are far more favorable to doing multicasting than doing HDTV," said William Meyers, an analyst for BancAmerlca Robertson Stephens in New York. "An advertiser isn't going to pay See Sinclair, 13c where deals Investing boutique investment banking firm with 10 employees that specializes in mergers, acquisitions, raising capital and giving financial advipe to executives. Led by two former Alex.

Brown Inc. investment bankers, Bengur and Charles A. Bryan, the firm targets Bill AlUNSON f. to strengthen the local economy. The concept was brought to UTEP by Frank Hoy, dean of the college of business administration, who once served on an advisory board for a Georgia veterans group that had attempted a similar program.

"Although the dropout rate was high, I was impressed that those who stuck with it became successful," Hoy said. "I thought Employment Sun, fan and IBM recruiters Economic boom sends firms scrambling after kids on spring break ASSOCIATED PRESS PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. Spring break, and the college students who descended on this beach found a sculpture that bore no resemblance to the elaborate castles that typically emerge from the sugar-white sands. A huge IBM ThinkPad laptop computer had sprouted, encouraging the young crowd to think "Big Blue," the company's hip name, as they sip margaritas and catch the rays. A booming economy and low jobless rate have employers as diverse as IBM and the Atlanta Police Department hitting the beach to recruit college students at the two-day Spring Break Career Expo '98 that began late last week.

"The competition for college students has really heated up, especially for technical degrees," said Ralph Mobley, an IBM recruiter. "Spring break is an opportunity to get in front of a big audience of college students." IBM hired two Tampa fly-Mr L4 Rumors of mergers, strongorders raise reproducers' shares Offer for Inland was catalyst Bethlehem shares expected to open 20 higher today By Sean Somerville Bethlehem Steel Corp. shares are expected to open today about 20 percent higher than a week ago, after a climb last week amid expectations of high first-quarter earnings and possible industry consolidation. The company last week put together a string of five 52-week high closing prices, ranging from $12.3125 Monday to $14.75 Friday. The heavy trading last week put shares 85 percent above $7.9375, the 52-week low registered Dec.

29. Bethlehem shares got a boost Tuesday after Ispat International NV said it would buy Inland Steel Co. a transaction that some analysts said portends the long-awaited consolidation of the U.S. steel industry. Other steel stocks also rose sharply last week, with AK Steel Holding Corp.

up 10 percent, USX-US Steel Holding Co. up 7 percent and ery few minutes, from 6:30 a.m. to midnight. Millions of passengers a year experience what's affectionately known as "Kai Tak Heart Attack." On July 6 73 years after the first plane took off from Hong Kong it's scheduled to come to an end. Authorities will open a new, and considerably more prosaic, airport at Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong's rural west.

Everybody agrees that Kai Tak is small, too close to the city and handling 29 million passengers a year too crowded. Still, flight buffs, romantics and pilots alike will mourn the passing. "There's no other city where you come so close to it, landing in the heart of the city," said British antique dealer Alex Lamont. "This is Jil-it. I rift Wb 'Wi I St Man's 2-year journey from fresh out of work to owner of 2 stores ASSOCIATED PRESS EL PASO, Texas Months before David McKay found himself out of a job in 1996, he had already begun laying the groundwork for leaving the corporate world and trying to succeed as a small businessman.

McKay coupled his own research with information from a seminar put on by the Franchise Center an outreach program at the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) as he launched his initial foray into franchising. "It was something I wanted to do, and I just felt this would give me some good information," McKay said. Nearly two years later, McKay is the owner of two thriving sports paraphernalia shops and is considering a third. Looking back, McKay says, "They could probably have talked me out of it, too. But once I heard it I thought, 'I can do I'm glad I went." The Franchise Center was established at UTEP in 1994 to encourage and assist would-be entrepreneurs and get made businesses that would typically be brushed aside by the industry's largest investment banking houses.

While the transactions are small, the firm provides a critical service: It helps keep the economy humming by brokering deals that match sellers with buyers, and investors with investment opportunities. Since it opened in a basement apartment in Mount Washington seven years ago, Bengur Bryan has put together an impressive list of deals. Last September, it sold Raven Software Corp. to Activision the Santa Monica, video game software maker, for more than $10 million. Raven, a small ASSOCIATED PRESS Landing at Hong Kong gets less thrilling Kong for me.

It's exciting from the moment you arrive." Those on the ground have learned to pause in their conversations as another jet roars shaking buildings and casting a giant shadow over the streets. The airport closes nightly to cut the noise. Businesses have learned to profit from Kai Tak's approach. The Top Banana in Kowloon City offers a rooftop barbecue and glass walls for better viewing of planes banking several hundred yards away on final approach. Waiter Leon Wong says window tables always go first.

"Plane spotters," undaunted by the noise and potential danger, bring cam- li fik i3 ifi1 Hii'iJfcn tfAnj fCttf JiuJlM Hemmed-in airport isbeingreplaced ASSOCIATED PRESS HONG KONG On a drizzly afternoon thick with the smell of jet fuel, a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 thunders low over apartment blocks and aims its big, blunt nose directly at a seven-story parking ramp. At the last minute, it banks sharply above a highway overpass, levels off and touches down. Landing at Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport, squeezed between hill and harbor in one of the most crowded places on Earth, leaves first-time passengers terrorized or elated and often both, i. il'wn'iawtfwvw J.AY million for a technology company, $10 million for entertainment software business, $6 million for an Internet news media company and $1.5 million for a rapidly growing Papa John's Pizza franchise in which it holds an ownership stake. It is also selling a company that installs entertainment systems.

"We are seeing our business accelerate," said O. R. "Oz" Bengur, a founder of Bengur Bryan. "We have very strong deal flow." in jn tit rr 13 tfiin i -rti.