Daily Record from Morristown, New Jersey • 19

k. -i. iC i. y. Stocks B2-3 SECTION Mutual Funds B3 1 Television B5 jj Comics B6 1 JVjjM Classified B7-12 XJ Howto Reach Us BUSINESS EDITOR: Kathy Shwiff (973)428-6650 businessdailyrecord.com RECORD.

DAILY RECORD, MORRIS COUNTY In Brief IHF tro a ro cky road to ConAgra sale by Tim O'Reiley Daily Record billion, or $22 a share. The preliminary proxy statement detailing the deal, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, spelled out how extensively International Home Foods shopped itself around even as top executives said the company could stay independent. Although the company acquired several new product lines to boost sales and profits after its 1996 sale by Madison-based American Home Products the papers also show how owning an eclectic array of labels, from Pam cooking spray to Chef Boyardee pastas to Gulden's mustard to Libby's vegetables, hindered the growth strategy. The search for a partner began in earnest in December 1998, when ConAgra contacted the company to offer about $20 a share in stock. But two months later, the talks broke off when International Home Foods decided that the price was too cheap for the marketing initiatives that it expected to greatly improve the bottom line.

Nevertheless, a parade of other negotiations ensued, sometimes with two or three running simultaneously and all with the goal of buying a major division from someone else or selling the company. But one by one, the offers fell by the wayside, generally because of price differences. Perhaps the most serious Home Foods' deal-making currency of choice. Deals came to a halt as they became too expensive and "exceedingly difficult" to complete. As a result, the company turned to ConAgra again May 17, nine days before talks broke down with the suitor that had dropped its final offer to $17 a share.

After slightly more than a month of haggling, the two sides agreed that ConAgra would pay $22 a share in half cash, half stock, a 10 percent boost on the $20 a share all stock that ConAgra had proposed 18 months earlier. TIM O'REILEY can be reached at (973) 428-6651 or toreileymorristo.gannett.com. from American Home in 1996, then overseeing the initial public stock offering the next year. Because Hicks, Muse's style was to buy and resell companies at a profit as quickly as possible, securities analysts, such as David Bianco at CS First Boston in New York, came to expect a sale. The size of the stake that Hicks, Muse owned in the company "probably exceeded their intended horizon," Bianco wrote.

Hicks, Muse and Metropoulos had also counted on generating growth through acquisitions. Wall Street came to shun the far-flung product line, according to the proxy, driving down the price of the stock that was International overture, brought in March by an unidentified company that had first shown interest a year earlier, looked at one point at. if it would pay $20 a share for International Home Foods excluding its canned seafood divisit n. A closer look at the books prompted the potential buyer to cut its price to about 17 a share May 26, bringing discussions to a halt. The maneuvering was conducted against the backdrop of International Home Foods' ownership structure.

The Dallas investment firm of Hicks, Muse, Tate Furst and International Homes Foods Chairman and CEO C. Dean Metropoulos owned 43.1 percent of the stock after buying it PARSIPPANY As the stock suffered a steep slide through much of 1998, the hierarchy at International Home Foods opted for a radical solution. The Parsippany-based food processor decided by the end of the year to attempt to revive the stock, which had lost more than two-thirds of its value in six months to bottom at $10.13 a share in October 1998, by bulking up with a big acquisition or selling the company. After talking with eight companies in 18 months, International Home Foods wound up almost where it started by selling to giant ConAgra for $1.6 Verizon official visits in Madison ,1 s- Drop in jobless rate worries economists WASHINGTON (AP) A bigger-than-expected drop in the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits last week shows some employers are still scrambling for workers and has analysts wondering if the economy remains inflation-prone. While a tight labor market is good for workers, economists find it worrisome.

They fear wages and benefits could rise too sharply as employers struggle to recruit and retain workers added costs that companies could pass along to consumers as higher prices. The Labor Department reported Thursday that 296,000 Americans filed new claims for jobless benefits for the week ending July 1, down by 12,000 from the previous week. That was the lowest level since May 27, when claims were at 290,000. Generic drugmakers see earnings growth NEW YORK (Dow Jones News) Manifest in their surging share prices so far this year, generic drugmakers are witnessing acceleratr irig earnings, with most likely to exceed analyst estimates in the latest quarter. Companies in the sector are benefiting from robust revenue streams, legal victories and a wave of patent expirations the life blood for the sector, said UBS Warburg analyst Andrew For-man.

During the quarter, the sector saw continued slimming in its ranks. In May, Watson Pharmaceuticals agreed to acquire Schein Pharmaceuticals of Florham Park. Price of crude oil drops below $30 Crude oil prices spiraled back below $30 a barrel Thursday as the market braced for a potentially big influx of extra supplies on the market from Saudi Arabia and other leading producers. Other energy prices also tumbled. On Saudi Arabia's prompting, oil prices have now dropped 8 percent in the past two days on the New York Mercantile By kathy Shwiff Daily Record VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS History: Formed from merger of Bell Atlantic Corp.

and GTE Corp. Deal closed Friday after gaining approval of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, shareholders and 27 states. Company will begin using the name Verizon Communications widely Aug. 1.

Name: From Latin "Veritas," meaning truth and connoting reliability, and "horizon," signifying forward-looking and visionary. Stock: Began trading as VZ on the New York Stock Exchange Monday. GTE shareholders will receive 1.22 shares of Verizon for each share of GTE and will be notified about how to exchange certificates. Bell Atlantic shareholders do not need to do anything. Employees: One of top 10 employers in the United States with more than 260,000 employees.

Operations in 31 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and presence in 40 countries. Services: Local and long-distance telephone service, wireless service, highspeed data service, print and online directories. Revenue: About $60 billion from both companies in 1999. Customers: 63 million access lines, 25 million wireless customers, 4 million paging customers. Web site: www.verizon.com 7 fVt 4 ir- i JOHN DtLL DAILY RECORD Ted Raffetto, president of enterprise solutions business services for Verizon Communications, speaks to workers at Verizon in Madison.

The company was created by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE. cssss MADISON Patricia Malanga of Jefferson spotted a GTE building on her recent vacation in Hawaii and was thinking how nice it would be to work there. As a net work technician at Bell Atlantic which has just merged with GTE Corp. to become Verizon Communications, she could. The ability to transfer to jobs in the South and other parts of the country, is just one way employees will benefit from the merger, said Ted Raffetto, president of enterprise solutions business services at Verizon, who toured the company's operations in Madison yesterday.

Employees also will have more opportunities for advancement in the company, now one of the 10 biggest in the country with operations in 31 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as well as abroad. Few if any layoffs are anticipat-ed, Raffetto said, because only some corporate legal and financial positions are likely to overlap. However, Verizon anticipates some savings because it will be operating on a larger scale, he added. Almost 900 people work in Verizon's building on Park Avenue in Madison, which houses a network operations center and data service center as well as marketing and sales staff. Raffetto was one of 80 Verizon executives who spent "Day One" at the company's largest operations lantic who will become Verizon's sole CEO in 2002.

During the broadcast, Lee point ed to the changing nature of the company's business, which is expected to reap more than half of its revenues from non-telecom services by 2003. Voice telephone services were 68 percent of the two companies' business in 1999, with domestic wireless providing 13 percent, data and directory services providing 7 percent each, and about 3 percent coming from international operations. Total revenues are expected to reach $85 billion to $90 billion in 2003, compared with about $60 billion for Bell Atlantic and GTE combined in 1999. Raffetto, a New Jersey native who lives in southern Monmouth County and works in New York City, said the new company will be better able to serve large business customers because of its broader field of operations. "We will begin to build a national sales organization," he said.

Residential customers will not notice any changes in service although their bills will come from Verizon starting Aug. 1, Raffetto said. KATHY SHWIFF can be reached at (973) 428-6650 or kshwiff morristo.gannett.com. Marta Cinardo, a team leader, greets Raffetto during a visit to tour the company's operations at its Madison location. Raffetto says few, if any, layoffs are anticipated.

throughout the country. He greet- chief executives, Charles R. Lee, ed workers who were invited to former head of GTE, and Ivan Sei-watch a broadcast by Verizon's co- denberg, former head of Bell At- Markets Thursday DOW CLOSE 10,481 NYSE Some surprises about who's buying homes RIEFCASE 0.85 CLOSE 646 Al-m NASDAQ Company News 97.47 CLOSE 3,961 AMEX 6.17 CLOSE 928 WARREN BOROSON ON REAL ESTATE SAP 500 10 44 CLOSE 1,457 NYSE Diary Advances: 1 ,652 Declines: 1,265 Unchanged: 446 Total issues: 3,363 Total volume: 1,044,862,520 10. True. That surprised me, too.

I thought they would be older. 11. four of five. 12. C.

And single female buyers were most common in the South. 13. 65. The buyer paid the buyer's agent 15 percent of the time; both the buyer and the seller paid, 10 percent; 10 percent didn't know. 14.

The Northeast. 15. Percentage of respondents saying "neighborhood" was 74, price 71, work 32, school 32. 16. Less.

Only 11 percent of buyers in the Northeast bought new homes, compared with 27 percent in the South, 24 percent in the West and 17 percent in the Midwest. 17. In the Northeast, buyers took a median of 10 weeks. In the Midwest and South, they took eight weeks, and in the West, six weeks. In all regions, the typical buyer looked at 10 houses before purchasing one.

Scoring: Anything more than oneright: excellent. None right: Very good. (The test may have been hard, but the scoring was lenient, wouldn't you agree?) BOROSON ON REAL ESTATE appears on Fridays. You can reach Warren Boroson at (973) 428-6647 or wboroson morristo.gannett.com. He writes about money matters on Tuesdays and Sundays.

It's Friday, and you know what that means. Test time. Take out your notebooks. This quiz comes from a study called the 2000 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. The NAR received 1,778 usable responses from a questionnaire mailed last winter to 20,000 people who had bought or sold a home in 1999.

Warning: This test is not easy. 1. Are typical buyers younger or older than they were 10 years ago? youngerolder 2. True or false? "The typical home-buyer household consisted of a married couple aged 29 years old with a household income of $60,400." 3. What percentage of buyers would definitely use the same agent again? A.

Half. B. 90. C. 75.

4. What percentage of home-buyers used the Internet as an information source? A. 10. B. 37.

C. 55. D. 76. 5.

True or false? "Internet users tended to be younger and purchased more expensive homes than other home-buyers." 6. Which is true? "Home-buyers who searched on the Internet were actually (more likely) (less likely) (as likely) to use a real estate agent to complete the home search and close the transaction." 7. What percentage of buyers didn't sell their previous homes but held onto them for investment purposes? A. 5. B.

9. C. 15. 8. How many agents did sellers typically interview before selecting the agent who sold their home? A.

One. B. Two. C. Three or more.

9. One of these four sources shouldn't be there. Which one? "Most buyers learned about the home they eventually purchased mainly through their agents, yard signs, newspaper advertisements and the Internet." 10. True or false? "Sellers of homes who sold their homes themselves tended to be younger and earned less money than agent-assisted sellers." 11. What percentage of home-sellers used a real estate agent? A.

90. B. 80. C. 93.68.

12. What percentage of home-buyers were single females and what percentage single males? A. 15 and 15. B. 11 and 19.

C. 13 and 9. 13. In what percentage of the cases did the seller pay the buyer's agent? A. B.

65. C. 80. 14. Which region of the country had the most first-time home-buyers? Northeast, South, Midwest or West? implement an consortium's proposed purchase of a 39 percent voting stake in Net2Phone, which was announced March 31.

Accredited Health Services' of Hackensack has agreed to acquire Health Force Owned an Ohio-based company that offers home health care services in New York and New Jersey. BiznessOnline.com of Wall has acquired Batavia, N.Y.-based Integration Inc. for an undisclosed amount of common stock. IDT Corp. of Newark plans to buy back as many as 10 million shares, valued at about $36.4 billion based on Wednesday's closing price of $36.44.

The buyback represents 25 percent of the company's outstanding common standing. SeraNova, an e-business -consulting firm in Edison, has been awarded a contract to develop a global intranet-based software system for Ford Motor human resources professionals. The system, called HRlink, will serve as a central communications hub for more than 2,600 human resource professionals worldwide who work for the Detroit-based carmaker. Morris County Honeywell International, based in Morris Township, would spend more than $12.5 million to remove toxic chemicals at the former Allied Chemical Co. plant on the shore of Onondaga Lake under a cleanup plan tentatively chosen by New York state regulators.

The cleanup plan was selected by the state Department of Environmental Conservation from numerous alternatives presented by Hon-eywell, which signed a consent order in February accepting responsibility for cleaning up the 25-acre site in Solvay, a Syracuse suburb. Honeywell merged with Al-liedSignal last year. Allied made liquid chlorine and caustic soda at the New York plant for almost 40 years before selling the property to LCP Chemicals in 1979. DKB and Partners, a Morristown advertising and public relations agency, has been selected by Newark-based freight transportation company G.O.D. to create its branding campaign for 2000.

State Nct2Phone of Hacken-sack said shareholders have approved changes needed to 15. What was the single most important factor influencing buyers' choices of homes? A. Schools. B. Neighborhood.

C. Price. D. Work. 16.

Were buyers in the Northeast (more) or (less) likely to buy new homes (rather than existing homes) than buyers elsewhere? 17. In which part of the country did buyers take the most time in looking for a house? (Northeast) (Midwest) (South) (West) Answers: 1. They're older. The typical buyer last year was 39 years old and in 1989 only 34. 2.

False. The correct age is 39, not 29. 3. three of four. 4.

37. 5. True. 6. More likely.

7. 9. 8. one. But buyers in the Northeast were likely to interview or use more than one agent.

9. The Internet. More learned from friends, neighbors and relatives. Money rates Prime lending 9.50 Fed discount 6.00 Federal funds 6.50 Mortgages 30-year fixed (N.J.) 8.49 15-year fixed (N.J.) 8.15 1-year adjustable (N.J.) ....7.02 1-year Treas. ARM index .6.13 Auto loans (N.J.) 3- year new car 8.38 4- year new car 8.67 3-year used car 9.94 4 year used car 9.82 Money market funds Money mutual funds 5 86 Banks, 2.11 Treasury security rates 3-month T-bill discount 5.830 frmonth T-bill discount 5.975 10-year note 6.04 Gold prices Dollar in yen $107.42 Gold (ounce) $283.20 Sourcet: HSH Associates, Telerate Systems.

IBCDonogliue's Money Fund Report. Bank Rate Monitor. Associated Press.