The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 63

DOW THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1989 BU writes off $16m of Seragen stake By Peter G. Gosselin GLOBE STAFF T.G.I.F. Is Axel in or out? Morgan, the retired dean of BlTs business school and a heavy contributor to the university. The new write-off will all but wipe out the university's original $26.2 million investment in the firm, but will not stanch the losses anytime soon. The university reportedly continues to spend between $800,000 and $1 million a month covering Seragen's operating costs.

The open-ended spending will do little to help BlTs budget which already is be- BU, Page 64 jor American university currently has committed to a single investment venture. As they have before, BU spokesmen yesterday defended the school's investment. "We feel that Seragen has met or exceeded all of its scientific and budgetary goals," said Thomas D. Cashman, the school's public affairs vice president However, critics said the investment threatens to financially cripple the university. "I've discussed this with investment managers all over Boston, and all of them to a person think it is crazy," said Henry treatments for cancer and other diseases based on research by a BU scientist News of the investment caused a flap earlier this year when it was disclosed that besides buying the majority stake, BU also had assumed the full cost of Seragen's day-to-day operations after other investors refused to, fearing loss of their money.

BU now has an estimated $60 million tied up in the company, the equivalent of about one in every three dollars of its endowment and similar funds, and a larger portion of endowment than any other ma Boston University plans to write off as lost $16.4 million of its controversial investment in a small biotechnology company, the equivalent of $1 in every $12 of its endowment, documents show. The write-off will bring to more than $26 million the amount the university has given up as lost since mid-1987 when it became the chief investor in Seragen a Hopkinton company that is working on Officials seek probe into oil price rise THE TEA LEAF READERS AT Pat McGovern's International Data Corp. feel that the star of Axel Leblois, the fair-haired French import who seemed to occupy the No. 2 spot at the company, has lost some luster of late. A series of management changes carried out in the name of "decentralizing" McGovern's empire has landed Leblois with the not-terribly-impressive job of managing International Data IDG's market research subsidiary that plays a distant second fiddle to the company's successful publishing business.

Previously, Leblois was president of IDG Communications, which included most of the company's 120 publications, including PC World and Computerworld. A company spokeswoman denies that Leblois, who is vacationing and not available for comment, has lost status in the switch. "It's not a demotion or a loss of power," she says. "It's a real opportunity for him." Leblois will retain the title of IDG vice chairman and still sits on the company's three-person executive committee. BNEbackchat The long knives are out for beleaguered Bank of New England chairman Walter Connolly, who somehow managed to hold on to his job at least temporarily at a board meeting last Friday.

Insiders say Connolly, who came to 7 1 i r- sjf'C By Larry Tye GLOBE STAFF BNE from Hartford after the bank merged with CBT is still busily trying to blame the bank's staggering loan problems on Boston operations manager and vice chairman Richard Driscoll, a tactic that is winning the already unpopular executive few friends: Says' 1 CONNOLLY NEW YORK New England senators and governors yesterday demanded that the Bush administration and Congress' investigate what they called an appalling rise jn home heating oil prices over the last month. The call for action, which regional officials said was one of the quickest and most concerted in recent memory, took various forms: Massachusetts Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy asked the secretary of energy to launch a probe, Connecticut Gov. William O'Neill asked the Senate and House energy committees tQ investigate, and Rhode Island Gov. Eifevard DiPrete directed his appeal to the Federal Trade Commission.

Gov. Dukakis requested Energy Department action last week, while the Massachusetts state Senate beseeched President Bush to get involved. Govs. John McKernan of Maine, Madelaine Kunin of Vermont and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire are expected to make similar appeals to federal officials today. Even as the officials acted, however, investors and suppliers offered the first signs in weeks that heating oil prices may be softening: Prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where traders try to anticipate trends, fell 3.3 cents, to 96.4 cents a gallon.

And in New York Harbor yesterday, spot prices for heating oil were down 12 cents a gallon. But yesterday's close on the futures market is still 14.7 cents higher than at the end of last week. And energy officials said ENERGY, Page 64 GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JOHN BLANDING The Coast Guard cutter Pendant breaks a channel through the ice in Gloucester Harbor yesterday. Fla. freeze boosts cost of orange juice By Larry Tye GLOBE STAFF Problems began Christmas weekend, when temperatures in northern Florida plummeted to the teens.

The freeze was bad enough, and remained long enough, to chill a large percent of the crop. Gov. Bob Martinez declared the entire state a disaster area yesterday, a move that could open the door to federal loans for growers who lost crops. The fact that the weather had been cold for some time somewhat steeled the ORANGES, Page 64 the nation's biggest processor juice. That is because if the crops had stayed warm there would have been a huge surplus of oranges, which would have caused the half-gallon price to fall by 30 cents.

Traders on the New York Cotton Exchange were equally apprehensive yesterday about the affects of the freeze: The January contract price for a pound of oranges rose by 8 cents in frenzied trading. The price has risen by 21 cents since last Friday, when it closed at $1.37. NEW YORK Frigid temperatures that blanketed Florida's orange groves last weekend will drive up the price of a carton of juice by 20 cents or more, industry officials predicted yesterday. The full cost to consumers of the freeze actually will be closer to 50 cents on each half-gallon carton, said George Zulanas, vice president of Tropicana Products one executive: "Driscoll is known and respected in this city, and frankly, Connolly isn't." This man adds that Connolly "has created a culture here of fear and suspicion and lying. When you tell him something he doesn't want to hear, he eviscerates you." Says another man who considers himself a friend of Connolly's: "Right now he thinks everyone is trying to kill him." And who's to say he's wrong? Where's Terry Murray when we need him? Out of print Quinlan Press, owned by Boston entrepreneur Henry Quinlan, is on its way out of business.

Quinlan published several interesting books in recent years, including an amusing series of trivia guides and two regional best sellers: K.C. Jones' autobiography "Rebound" and the Richard Gaines-Michael Segal collaboration, "Dukakis and the Reform Impulse," which appeared just as the governor launched his ill-starred campaign for the presidency. On the asset side of the ledger, Quinlan has just started up a newsletter on US-Soviet trade called Doing Business in the USSR. Written by Oleg Benyukh, the former Novosti Press Agency bureau chief in Washington, the $300-a-year newsletter will be jointly published each month by Quinlan and the Moscow Worker publishing house in the USSR. Odds and ends How unusual of the Wall Street Journal's normally reliable advertising columnist Joanne Lipman to let loudmouth ad exec Jerry Delia Femina vent his oft-stated personal loathing for Jack Connors' agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, Shuttle fare hikes set by Trump, Pan Am 'Collectively, the Soviets have a fairly complete computer industry.

The problem is that the quality and quantity are below Western and now some Far Eastern standards. SEYMOUR GOODMAN, University of Arizona Computer lag irks Soviets Allied limits on technology kept East in the dark for 40 years Cosmopulos in front of the WSJ 5 million readers. In a Dec. 28 column, Lipman By Lawrence Edelman GLOBE STAFF 11 1 1 1 mt far Jr. riT 1 quotes Delia Femina -and HT 1 onlv Delia Femina -trash hen asked how advanced computers are in the Soviet Union, Marshall Goldman, associate director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, tells a popular Soviet joke: Soviet en ing two controversial Hill Holliday ad campaigns for Wang Laboratories and the Nissan Infiniti, which he labels the worst campaigns of DELLA FEMINA By Frank Mauran CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Both the Trump Shuttle and the Pan Am Shuttle, the two carriers that dominate the shuttle market in the Northeast will raise their fares by 20 percent beginning Wednesday.

The fare for a one-way flight between Boston and New York, and also New York and Washington, during times of peak traffic will increase from $99 to $119, and during off-peak hours from $69 to $79. The fares are the same for both carriers. The move was initiated by the Trump Shuttle, owned by New York real-estate developer Donald J. Trump, which, according to spokeswoman Joan Fudala, made the decision to raise its rates two weeks ago. After learning of its competitor's increase, Pan Am followed suit last week, according to spokeswoman Elizabeth Manners.

Both airlines cited higher fuel costs as well as higher labor and maintenance costs as the main reasons for the hikes, and both were also quick to point out that it had been 18 months since the last increase. They also said the convenience of the service was more important than the fares to business travelers, who are estimated to make up more than 80 percent, of the vol-SHUTTLES, Page 64 how far the Eastern bloc lags in these areas reveals the possibilities open to Western companies seeking to tap this potential market of 400 million people. It also shows the many obstacles they face. The USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries together produce a range of computers, from single-user personal com- puters to big mainframes, and the software needed to run -them. "Collectively, they have a fairly complete computer industry," says Seymour Goodman, a University of Arizona professor.

The problem, he says, is that "the quality and quantity are below Western and now some Far Eastern Indeed, poor quality and scarce availability are the two -biggest headaches for computer users in the East Their ma-chines are five to 10 years or more behind the West Domestic manufacturers churn out several hundred thousand PCs a year, but they are at best equivalent to the IBM PCAT, a six-year-old system. When it comes to larger minicomputers and mainframes, they are even further behind, relying on knockoffs of International Business Machines Corp. and Digital Equipment' Corp. models that are anywhere from five to 15 years out of date. "They don't have the ability to manufacture advanced computers on a broad scale.

But they can dc just about any- EAST, Page 70 gineers, it goes, are very proud they have built the world's largest computer chip. With the rest of the world building ever-smaller chips, the joke reveals the frustration many Soviets feel knowing their country is years behind in an area so crucial to its future. The situation isn't much better elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Why? There are several reasons, specialists say, but none more important than a decision 40 years ago by the United States and its allies to try to prevent Communist-bloc nations from importing technology that might improve their military might Although strict export restrictions imposed by the allies did not stop the USSR from building a powerful nuclear arsenal, they have kept the East largely in an electronic Dark Ages. With the rapid improvements in East-West relations, however, the Bush administration is talking seriously about ending this high-tech blockade of computers, telecommunications systems and other sophisticated gear.

A look at just the decade. (For the record, Wang considered the jargon-filled computer ads to be quite successful.) No doubt they're breaking out champagne at Delia Femina, McNameeWCRS-Bos-ton, Jerry's layoff-plagued Boston field office Starting next month, the Christian Science Monitor television studio will begin broadcasting four programs over WWOR, a New Jersey-based superstation that reaches 13 million households. The church-owned WQTV, Channel 68 in Boston, already carries three of he programs "Today's Monitor," "One Norway Street" and "Fifty Years Ago Today," and will also pick up "The Children's Room." 52.