The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 27

Dow Jone average 30 Industrials i 1 i i 111 II: 1 i tat 1 i 1 2.S5A i L- The Orlando Sentinel Complete stock market listings, C-2 Saturday, August 15, 1987 FLORIDA 22 29 MAY 5 12 19 26 JUNE Takeover defense deals HBJ a loss By Susan G. Strother OF THE SENTINEL STAFF from the repurchase and retirement of $18.8 million of convertible subordinated debentures. HBJ executives did not return phone calls Friday. To reduce costs and service its sub-i stantial debt, HBJ said Monday in a fil- ing with the Securities and Exchange; Commission that it would lay off 1,600 people, or 10 percent of its work force of freeze salaries; sell assets; and increase admission prices at its theme parks. Please see HBJ, C-6 compared with a $3.5 million profit in the same period last year.

In the latest quarter, HBJ incurred recapitalization-related charges of $98.94 million, $67.3 million of which was legal, accounting and investment-banking fees related to the defense. Each of HBJs three lines of business, however, reported positive operating income for the quarter, and two earned substantially more than in the comparable period of 1986. Backing out the recapitalization charges, the company had operating income of $21.5 million compared with $24.8 million in the same quarter a year earlier. The lower operating income was due in part to an unexplained drop of income in the company's publishing division. HBJ, the nation's largest textbook publisher, earned $3.6 million in its publishing operations in the latest quarter compared with $13.3 million a year earlier.

HBJ's theme-parks division earned $14.3 million compared with $9 million, and its insurance group earned $10.1 million, up from $6.9 million. Also reported as an extraordinary charge against income was $11.2 million Harcourt Brace Jovanovich which borrowed nearly $3 billion this summer to repel a hostile takeover, on Friday reported a quarterly loss of $70.7 million on revenue of $408.7 million. Extraordinary expenses associated with HBJ's takeover defense against Robert Maxwell plunged the Orlando publisher into the red for the quarter ended June 30. For the first half of the year, the company lost $98.5 million THE MARKETS Dow Jones average 2,685.43, down 6.06 NYSE index 186.68, down 0.27 AMEX index 363.61, down 1.40 OTC index 451.61, up 0.06 Dow Jones bond index 87.86, up 0.12 Gold, Comex close $452.00, down $6.40 Silver, Comex close $7.40, down $0.25 Dollar, Fed index 100.49, down 0.59 Prime rate 8.25 Mortgages, 30-year fixed 9.875-10.25 1-yr. Treasury index as of Aug.

7 6.96 U.S. Consumer Price Index 340.1 WALL STREET EASING OUT. The stock market closed a week of dramatic gains and heavy trading with a modest decline Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 6.06 to 2,685.43 but nevertheless finished the week with a gain of 93.43. Volume on the New York Stock Exchange came to 196.12 million shares, down from 217.07 million Thursday.

CNW Corp. was the day's standout performer, jumping $13,125 a share to $39.25. The railroad holding company said it is talking with several parties about a possible sale or restructuring. Wall Street analysts said CNW could fetch $50 to $60 a share. JOHN Z.

DELOREAN LEGAL VICTORY. A federal bankruptcy judge Friday approved a settlement under which former auto magnate John Z. WFTV will move to new, bigger headquarters High-class credit cards Rates and fees 4 largest Florida banks issuing credit cards Premium card Standard card Fee Fee Rate Rate By Susan G. Strother OF THE SENTINEL STAFF $21 21 21 21 $30 35 48 45 Barnett NCNB Southeast Sun 14.75 18.00 16.50 13.25 18 18 18 18 free to customers with $5,000 savings or $15,000 super NOW account floating rate, prime plus 5 American Express Fee Optima fee i at. Green $45 $15, 13.5 interest Gold 65 $15, 13.5 interest Platinum 250 none, 13.5 interest Source: Sentinel research DeLorean will have to pay his creditors only $9.36 million of the $100 million debt of his defunct sports-car company.

DeLorean, 62, was acquitted in federal court in Detroit late last year on 15 counts of fraud and racketeering connected with his company. In ruling in favor of DeLorean, the ART ROCHESENTINEL DeLorean WFTV-Channel 9 will build a $12 million studio on a 4-acre tract in downtown Orlando next year, Cliff Conley, the station's vice president and general manager, said Friday. The ABC affiliate has operated from its current site at 639 West Central Boulevard since it went on the air in 1958. The new, quarters, on South Street between Summerlin and Osceola, is less than two miles from Channel 9's existing oper-, ation and nearly twice the size. Conley said the new building will have two produc- tion studios; the station's existing facility has only one.

The second studio will allow the station to pro- duce more commercials and local programs, he said, The new location also should protect the station from signal interference, Conley said. He said the station feared that growth near its existing site would one day interrupt the transmission of its sig- -nal to a broadcast tower in Bithlo. "We've expanded where we are five or six times," Conley said, adding that the station also has run out of parking space. "But we still may do some studio productions from the old building even after the new one is built." Construction will start in the first quarter of 1988 and will take about a year, Conley said. The new building will incorporate state-of-the art broadcast equipment and will have an entirely electronic newsroom.

The 4-acre tract cost roughly $4 million, and construction spending will run between $10 million and $12 million, Conley said. WFTV, which employs 180 people, is owned by Cox Broadcasting Corp. of Atlanta. The station is one of eight TV properties owned by Cox and the only one owned by Cox in Florida, said John Furman, a Cox vice president. Banks push cards for high rollers Well-heeled customers are the targets in the latest marketing effort By Paul Sweeney OF THE SENTINEL STAFF sonville-based Barnett Banks are increasingly gaining the attention of Florida banks and credit-card companies.

Recently, Florida's banks and savings and loan associations have stepped up marketing efforts to sell well-heeled customers Premier Visa and Gold Mastercard. At the same time, American Express jolted the marketplace with the addition of its Optima card, which allows the customer to carry a balance at a 13.5 percent interest Please see CARDS, C-6 nia, one to Oregon. But that's not all. "Oh, yeah, three weeks before that I went to the Cayman Islands on vacation," he recalls. Whether he is on the road, in the air or just taking expert witnesses out for gourmet meals, O'Brien is usually packing a wallet full of plastic plates that help him negotiate even the stiffest bills.

Credit-using customers like O'Brien "the professional, upscale person, someone making a good income," in the words of guerite Martin, assistant vice president for retail marketing with Jack Michael O'Brien, 31, a personal-injury lawyer in Orlando, is just the kind of high-living superconsumer that Florida banks hope fervently to attract with their premier credit cards. He tours Florida highways in his 944 Turbo Porsche, he tells time with a pricey Rolex watch and travels frequently. The past six weeks have seen him take two business trips to Cleveland, one to Pennsylva Please see WFTV, C-6 Industrial production National output of factories, utilities and mines 1967-100 Builders hear economic forecast Pace of housing starts will be a bit slower, analyst predicts Wholesale prices rise more slowly ASSOCIATED PRESS 130 By Jack Snyder OF THE SENTINEL STAFF 128 126 124 judge said that critics of the settlement had failed to prove that it was unfair and unreasonable. The judge also said it might be impossible for creditors to get more. LABOR NEGOTIATIONS SETBACK.

The United Auto Workers union rejected General Motors first major 1987 contract proposal Friday, telling the No. 1 U.S. automaker that it wants promises in the existing pact honored before considering any changes. Donald Ephlin, UAW vice president and chief negotiator, gave an example of a violation of the 1984 pact: GM is not giving highly skilled workers enough to do at some plants, he said, but pays subcontractors more to do the same tasks. Both sides are working toward a Sept.

14 deadline to fashion a new contract for GM's 335,000 UAW workers. BOEING CO. PLANE TALK. Boeing Co. received a significant airplane order Friday.

British Airways said it will buy 11 Boeing 767 twinjets and three 757s with a total value of more than $925 million. Loser in the competition: the comparable Airbus A300. In addition to the 14 jets ordered for use on British Airways' domestic and European routesthe airline took an option for 15 additional jets. Delivery of the planes is to begin at the end of 1989. OJ SALES A BIT SOUR.

Sales of orange juice in U.S. supermarkets fell 4 percent in April and May from the same period a year earlier. The decline was the first in 18 months, according to an A.C. Nielsen Co. survey for the Florida Citrus Department.

Industry officials said higher prices were primarily to blame. The report showed that sales for all forms of orange juice totaled 144 million gallons during the two-month reporting period, down 4 percent, while the dollar value of sales was up 2 percent to $486 million. AMERICAN PIONEER SAVINGS BANK EARNINGS DECLINE. American Pioneer Savings Bank reported a second-quarter profit of $1.78 million, down from $2.28 million in the same period of 1986. The Orlando-based savings institution blamed the decline on a mandatory writeoff of secondary reserve funds lent to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp.

American Pioneer, which had assets of $2.1 billion on June 30, is the largest thrift based in Central Florida and the ninth largest in the state. MCNULTY BANKING CO. NEW OWNER. Barnett Bank of Pinellas County on Friday won the right to take over McNulty Banking Co. of St.

Petersburg, which was declared insolvent earlier this week. The Federal Deposit Insurance appointed as receiver of the bank, will assume McNulty's problem assets. The FDIC called for bids on sound loans, deposits and fixed assets. Barnett won with an offer of $2.14 million. Former McNulty offices in Treasure Island, Indian Rock, Palm Harbor and St.

Petersburg will open Monday as Barnett branches. bill 122 JASONDJF MAMJJ 1986 1987 Sourc: ftoim Rhkvi Board County. Godfrey noted that Florida's housing industry has been the second strongest in the country, trailing only California in production. That boom has been fueled by strong population growth, which has been running between 360,000 and 370,000 new residents annually the past few years. But growth in jobs now about 5 percent a year, which is double the national rate has enabled that strong population influx to continue, Godfrey said.

The state's unemployment rate, averaging a little over 5 percent, is a full percentage point under the national rate and virtually represents full employment, he said. "Florida has the best economic environment of any large state in the union." W.G. Bentley of Miami, chief economist for Florida Power Light told thj; grpup that a recent study he did comparing new residents with people already living in the state revealed some interesting data. Most newcomers came to Florida for the climate and lifestyle, Bentley said, and most already had jobs before they moved. Florida's housing industry will taper off in the balance of this year and in 1988 but still will be healthy, a bank economist told the directors of the Florida Home Builders Association in Orlando Friday.

John Godfrey of Jacksonville, chief economist of Barnett Banks of Florida, told the directors he expects housing starts this year to total between 170,000 and 180,000. Next year, the level should be in a range of 160,000 to 170,000, he said. Higher mortgage interest rates Godfrey predicted that rates will peak at 11.25 percent next spring and a slowdown in absorption of excess inventory in some areas will cause the decline in starts, the economist said. The state home-builders group is holding its summer meetings in conjunction with the Southeast Builders Conference, a regional trade show being held at Marriott's Orlando World Trade Center in south Orange WASHINGTON Increases in wholesale prices slowed to an annual rate of 2 percent in July, the government reported Friday, but sharp price rises for such items as lumber and plastics indicate that inflation could reignite later this year. The Labor Department said higher energy prices, including large increases for gasoline and home-heating oil, offset falling food prices to raise the Producer Price Index for finished goods 0.2 percent over June's level.

While July's rise matched that of June, the monthly annualized rate calculated from a more precise compilation of price changes than the overall rate released by the government dropped from 2.9 percent to 2 percent. Including the July figures, infla- SENTINEL GRAPHIC tion at the wholesale level for. the first seven months of 1987 is running at 4.2 percent, down from 4.5 percent for the first six months. The more widely used Consumer Price Index that measures retail inflation rose at an annual rate of 5.4 percent in the first six months. Figures for July are due out next week.

Please see PRICES, C-6 Layoffs are likely to level off in the next year, study says REUTER NEWS SERVICE absolute necessity to be constantly looking at the cost factor, and that is people." President Michael Hickey of Hickey and Associates, a Maryland-based industrial outplacement company that helped conduct the survey, said, "Regardless of what type of economy we are in, as a result of corporate restructuring, consolidations, mergers and foreign competition, people's jobs will be affected." Hickey noted that the results of the study, which also monitored attitudes toward staff cuts, showed that more than half of the companies will make reasonable efforts to retain employees and that the thing to do to see how lean a company can operate," he said. Neil Redford, president of New York-based Redford Group agreed. "I think downsizing has caught on as being the proper thing to do in running a business," he said. "When I went to school, materials, money and people were the three factors in business. It used to be that materials were the biggest cost.

Now, it's people," said Redford, whose company provides executive outplacement services. "In the current competitive economic climate, you can't sit around and not take this into consideration," Redford said. "We learned our lesson that this is an sizing will decrease, those planning to do so over the next 12 months will cut about the same number of jobs as during the past period. The average number of jobs lost in past downsizing actions was 362; the average number of future reductions is 356, according to the study. The results imply that such reductions are not necessarily accelerated by economic emergency or in response to hard times, AMA project director Eric Green-berg said.

"Senior managers always look to cut fat from their payrolls," he said. Greenberg said a minority opinion among corporate managers holds that downsizing has become a fad rather than an economic necessity, "it becomes CHICAGO The downsizing of America's work force has peaked, and fewer job cuts are expected over the next 12 months, according to a new study by the non-profit American Management Association. While nearly half of 1,134 respondents surveyed by the group said they had cut employment levels in the 18 months from January 1986 through June 1987, only 17.4 percent told of plans to prune their employment rolls further. The study released this week by the New York-based AMA says that, although the number of companies down Compiled from staff and wire reports almost 20 percent will do anything pos- sible to avoid teyoffs..