The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 208

Miami Metrorail 1 Rapid transit system starts operations today 0 22K" Dow falls again Loses 23.35 for week; stock -listings 14K-20K Sales take off 0 'Secondhand jet plane business is booming 1 I 1 2K SUNDAY. MAY 20. 1984' Elje3itlanJa20untal the lanta constitution SECTION It Shoney's going after new markets By Stuart Silverstein Staff Writer Marriott spokesman, said his company hopes to open new Big Boy restaurants here eventually. Whether Shoney's ties to Marriott were help or hindrance, the company did well. For 99 consecutive quarters, it has posted record profits and revenues, with earnings reaching $23.2 million on sales of 1397.8 million last year.

Shoney's has sistently ranked at the top of the industry in growth rates and profit margins. Analysts and company executives attribute the success of the company, listed as the 17th-largest restaurant concern in the nation in a recent industry poll, to several factors. "They diversified before it was in vogue," said John W. Weiss, a partner and analyst with the Montgomery Securities brokerage in San Francisco. The restaurants carrying the Shoney's name produce only 50 percent of the revenues and account for less than half of the well as its flagship business expands into new regions.

Shoney's will have to do it, without the familiar Big Boy trappings. The Big Boy double-decker hamburgers, introduced in 1935, are coming off Shoney's menus. Pictures and statues of the chubby Big Boy with checkered pants" holding a hamburger platter high will be removed. And the restaurants are to be known as "Shoney's," not Shoney's Big Boy. Company executives say forfeiting the Big Boy identity is a small price to pay for their corporate freedom.

"No one says they're going to Shoney's Big Boy Restaurant. They say they're going to Shoney's," said Ray banner, the company's chairman and chief executive officer. Gary P. Spoleta, Shoney's 40-year-old president and chief operating officer, added, "We got.no service or anything (from Marriott) and we were paying $2 million plus (annually) in franchise fees." The Big Boy name and symbol, however, may return to Georgia and other Southeastern states. -Robert T.

Souers, a NASHVILLE, Term. Being a big boy in the restaurant business wasn't enough for Shoney's Inc. The Nashville-based restaurant company, aspiring to grow into a giant in the industry, last month agreed to pay Marriott Corp. $13 million to win freedom from its "Big Boy" franchise agreement. In exchange for the money and for giving up the familiar Big Boy trademark, Shoney's gained permission to open its coffee shops outside of its existing 11-state Southeastern territory.

The cosmetic changes at Shoney's restaurants may give pause to long-time customers. But industry analysts who widely regard Shoney's as perhaps the best-managed restaurant company in the nation call the move a savvy one. They say the distinctive "hands-on" management style that keeps top Shoney's officials on top of nitty-gritty operational details will continue to serve the company MARK A HUMPHREYSpecial 6K See SHONEY'S, RAY DANNER: The chairman of Shoney's says 'bring on the Nick hi Poulos 1 jjffi. sr (yiOilSDlnig Oil pl Addison says nuclear power years away from gaining public support Vv' 'it 1 5 24K The 'scary time' A 1 JiSii Mb Xwlliillill through Its four electric utilities Georgia Power Alabama Power Co. (its two largest), Gulf Power Co.

and' Mississippi Power Co. In the midst of an economic and' reeulatorv climate that has naralvzed By Bob Deans Staff Writer the construction programs of most utili- '-fa Ro wed-up lacocca blasts trade policy Lee A. lacocca, the combative chairman of resurgent Chrysler must be taking extra target practice these days because he's shooting at anything that moves. In a rousing speech before, the League of Women Voters in Detroit last week, lacocca spared no one, not even President Reagan, who named him to head the commission to restore the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, The feisty Chrysler chief criticized the president for. his unwillingess to consider the development of a national industrial policy, ripped the administration and the press for "doing a war dance" about high car prices and "excessive" industry profits, awarded an or flunking grade to "all the boys In Washington" for their failure to resolve the trade and budget deficit problems, and fell just short of declaring war on Japan.

Opponents of industrial policy, said lacocca, are more concerned about ideology than results. "But why does a strategic five-year plan sound so bad anyway?" he said. "Everybody has got one. Everybody. Ball clubs have 'em; banks have 'em; foreign countries have 'em; the United States is the only one left without one.

Tf Stirring Congress' nest "It's really anathema to President Reagan and the Republicans. They just refuse to discuss it. "I happened to testify before a congressional commute on industrial policy on the same day, and in the same building, that Henry Kissinger was giving his commission report on why he needed $8 billion for the economic development of Central America. "One of the Republicans was prodding me a little, and I had the audacity to suggest maybe we should have a 5 billion economic development bank. I really wasn't for it that much, but I thought I'd stir things up.

"I said let's start with $5 billion to help basic industries The almost' lauehed me out of that room. Hell, it ties nationwide, southern has churned ahead with plan! to complete 11 generators during thel next six adding million kilowatts pf generating -capacity to the Southern system by 1990, at a cost estimated at $8.57 bil-X lion, "They have an aggressive construe- tion program, but it's not out of control," said Neal Kurzner, an analyst who tracks electric utilities for Salo-; mon Brothers. hi-; Ten of the Southern system's new plants will be hydro powered, but those will be relatively small by The lion's share of the generating capacity will come from coal-fired and nuclear plants sources that seem to become more sial by the week. But armed with record sales ant strong growth forecasts, predictions of, new technologies that promise to allay environmental concerns, and a can-do attitude that has catapulted him to the, top of the nation's largest investor- owned utility, Addison seems intent on pundturlng the pessimists' balloons. i "Nuclear power; plants are than playing softball," Addison commented recently to a Southern em- ployee who was nursing bruises from weekend sandlot action.

For 35 years, Ed Addison has hung on to a simple yet attractive jalr Of cufflinks, gold with tiny red fishing lures imbedded in clear resin. They remind him of days' spent floating the quiet waters of the Edisto River, jigging for bass with his father near the two-horse farm the family operated outside of Cottageville, S.C. Though he was a young boy at the i time, Addison still recalls the frustration his father felt when the federal government started propping up farmers price supports in the 1930's. "He couldn't understand getting paid for plowing cotton under," Addison said, "or for killing hogs," instead of raising them for food. Some of the government's business policies confuse Addison even today.

It's no longer pigs he's concerned about, however, but the future of the electric utility industry. In his 30 years in the business, Addison has watched burgeoning government regulations combine with new technology, high interest rates, environmental concerns, and the complexities of long range forecasting to transform the utility industry just as completely as the American family farm. 1 li was a year ago this month that Addison became the president of the Southern the giant Atlanta-based holding company that provides electricity to some 10 million customers ,1 J. 1 'K '1 A See ADDISON 4K j. J.C.

LEEStaff ED ADDISON: His Southern Co, is considered 'solid shows how naive I am. I thought an economic policy for Central America was for the central part of America called Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana." The charges that the auto industry's prices for its products are too high and that its profits are excessive are nothing more than "phony" issues, lacocca continued. "The auto industry's aggregate prices increased 12 percent during the last three years of voluntary Japanese import restraints," he said. "Japanese car prices went up 15 percent, while the consumer price index went up 17 percent. Alabama regional banking move is up to Wallace By Peter Mantius Staff Writer 1 r.

now, I'd say its chances would probably be zero," Avinger said. Kenneth' McCartha, Alabama's superintendent of banking, said Gov. Wallace has called a special session of the state legislature next week to deal with a number of unspecified issues. Speculation is the topics will be roads, taxes and labor legislation, not regional interstate banking. Wallace's press office referred all questions on banking issues to McCartha.

"In the one conversation I've had with him, he said the bankers need to get together," McCartha said. Brock noted that Wallace can call a special session of the legislature anytime he wants to push the regional banking issue. He's hoping Wallace will follow the example of the governors In Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, who championed the bills in their states. 1 "The philosophical questions of interstate banking have been settled," Brock said. "We already have interstate banking.

can't believe we have enough hard-tails in this state who will hang onto a sinking ship." east region is expected to pass there too. But in Alabama the debate is far from the boiling point. 7 Alabama's independent bankers overwhelmingly oppose any form of re-'" gional interstate banking. Alabama's four large bank holding companies are divided on the i Brock's company, Which has assets of $2.7 billion, and AmSouth Bancorp, in Birmingham, the state's largest holding company, want the legislation. But South-Trust Corp.

opposes the idea and First Alabama Bancshares has been mittal. C.E. Avinger, executive vice presi-. dent of the Alabama Bankers Associa-- tion, noted that Alabama's legislature is made up largely of rural representatives. So independent bankers tend to get their way- For example, a bill was smothered in committee this year that would have established that automated teller machines are not bank branches, and thereby permitted them anywhere in the state.

Another example: Before branching in other counties, banks must have the county pass legislation to allow it, "If a regional interstate banking bill were to be introduced In the legislature Car prices defended "Anybody who says we're gouging on prices is just plain wrong. 4 "Then there's profits. Even after the record $700 million profit we (Chrysler) turned in last year and the $706 million profit in the first quarter of this year I'm still in the hole $1.9 billion. That's part of that $3.5 billion we lost in the prior 10 quarters. 1 "What I'm saying to you is, if we keep flying high, by mid-1985 Chrysler will have managed to break even for the entire six-and-one-half-year period of my peer less leadership.

Big deal. "We don't know whether we're supposed to be proud or ashamed of the turnaround. We got clobbered when we lost money and get clobbered when we make a profit. Maybe we should have a long-range plan, a five-year plan, to break even, then nobody would get mad. "But I'm not really mad.

I'm worried. I'm worried about the real issues. "Interest rates, which brought the housing industry, the auto industry, and the whole economy to its knees, are inching up again. The United Auto Workers are gearing up for the most critical labor negotiations this country has seen id many years. Gov.

George Wallace appears to hold the deciding vote on whether regional interstate banking will make its way into Alabama anytime soon. But he has been silent on the question. "I'm pretty optimistic that If the political leadership wants it, it's got the power to do it," said Harry Brock, chairman and chief executive officer of Central Bancshares ot the South Inc. in Birmingham. A' "I know he's (Wallace) looking at the issue," Brock continued.

"He's got to decide what's best for the state of Alabama. If he thinks it's just a fight between the holding companies and the independents he'll leave it alone." Legislatures in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina have now passed reciprocal banking bills that would allow banks in those states to merge with each other. Pressure from the south has prompted North Carolina bankers to pull political strings to get the Issue considered in that state's short budget session this summer. A taw allowing North Carolina banks to merge within the South- .40, j. 9K See ALABAMA 3K See POULOS WALLACE! looking at issue..