Daily News from New York, New York • 217

fn -H $96.81 39.06 9 Unchanged -J8 TOlHlHI'liH DDSDODOS ft GdDGQ Dm PQDDOQ TICKER SEC seeks info on Oxford insiders Oxford Health Plans revealed the SEC has requested documents in connection with $38 million of Oxford's shares that were sold by insiders months before the stock plummeted from near-record highs. Chairman Stephen Wiggins sold 325,000 shares for as much as $77 each from May to August, netting him $23 million, according to a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court. Fourteen of the managed health-care company's top executives and directors sold more than 405,000 shares in August, according to securities filings. At least 13 investors have sued, accusing Wiggins and other Oxford execs of withholding news about problems to prop up the stock price while they sold large blocks of shares. More Asia fallout The Dow stumbled 18.90 points yesterday to wipe out an early surge of more than 50 points as blue-chip component Minnesota Mining Manufacturing tumbled 9 f.

I mi I -Ms TIMES SQUARE DdoogCs By PETER GRANT Daily News Business Writer Some of the city's top developers and big-name media companies are set to launch an intense bidding war for the last premier office building site in Times Square. Mega-builders Douglas Durst, Burton Resnick, Steve Roth and Jerry Speyer will likely bid more than $100 million for the site on the southwest corner of 42nd St. and Seventh sources said. The site, which is being put up for sale by Prudential Insurance, also is being eyed by HBO and Walt Disney, sources said. The two media giants are among the many New York companies who are shopping around for new space at a time when there is precious little of it available in the tightening office market "There's a whole long list of people we think we might end up talking to," said Rick Mathews, a Prudential spokesman.

Disney, which already has one of its theme stores on the site, would be a natural anchor tenant for the project, real estate experts said. The entertainment behemoth just opened its critically acclaimed New Amsterdam Theatre a few doors down. Also, Disney is studying whether to consolidate its city operations, which occupy over 250,000 square feet in three locations, sources said. A Disney spokesman declined comment HBO also has been looking in the Times Square area for a large block of office space for when its leases in two build -Oil DISNEY STORE currently operates on the site to be sold by Prudential in the heart of revitalized Times Square. Unchanged ,11 lJ mm venture with George Klein that has since been abandoned.

Those plans crumbled with the real estate market in the early '90s. Now that the market is coming back. Prudential has decided to sell off the sites one-by-one. A building on the site that Prudential is now putting on the block could be as big as 1.1 million square feet, just a bit smaller than the Chrysler Building. Experts say that Prudential's fourth site, on 42nd St between Broadway and Seventh would not be as good a location for an office building because the floors would be too small.

MiicirosoiRi: BILL GATES, Microsoft chief. Mf ii i I ') i1 s' Hro sHansenai Times Square Brewery 41STST. ings at Sixth Ave. and 42nd St expire in six years. The wildly successful cable channel employs about 1,200 workers in New York.

"We're absolutely shopping our options in this market," said Richard Plepler, senior vice president of HBO. The company also is looking at options in the Columbus Circle area, he said. Times Square is rapidly becoming the preferred office address for the city's leading media and entertainment corporations, as well as a mecca for tourists and theater-goers. Demand for office space has triggered a development boom in the area. The $500 million Conde Nast Building is now ris suit accusing the software giant of using its dominance in Windows software to gain business in the Internet browser market Last week, Federal Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson POINTCOUNTERPOINT The OP-ED Page considers 'Is Microsoft too Page 51 issued a preliminary injunction ordering chairman Bill Gates and Microsoft to quit requiring computer makers to distribute the Internet Explorer browser program as a condition of installing the popular Windows operating system software on their PCs.

Microsoft appealed the order Monday. Conde neuters rr I building I S-J 115 I 42NDST. I Disney I ft 1 Store I "Eggs points after the maker of Scotch tape and self-stick notes became the latest multinational company to say the economic weakness in Asia will hurt profits. A Slate charge Slate, Microsoft's magazine on the Web, will begin charging for subscriptions early next Publisher Rogers Weed said neither the price nor the timing of the move had been determined, but with about 140,000 readers, it was finally feasible to charge subscription fees. Slate debuted in June 1996 with Michael Kinsley of The New Republic as editor and a promise to bill readers $19.95 for a year's subscription.

No way out In a Confucian society that equates failure with dishonor, at least one South Korean businessman is committing suicide every day, according to the Korean Federation of Small Business. It said business-related suicides will exceed 400 this year as bankruptcies increase in a foundering economy. It also noted that 13,500 small businesses declared bankruptcy in the first 10 months of this year, vs. 11,000 for all of last year. Going in reverse Circuit City Stores reported a 40 drop in fourth-quarter profits to $11.9 million from $19.8 million in the same period last year, due to its struggling CarMax used-car jnit.

Circuit City stores contributed $14.01 million in net income, while the CarMax group posted a $2.06 million loss. Justice sEaons cmitteinnip1t foir ing at 42nd St and Broadway. Two months ago, news giant Reuters and the Rudin Organization announced that they would build an building on the northwest corner of Seventh Ave. and 42nd St, just opposite the parcel that Prudential is getting set to put on the block. "They're going to change the name from Broadway to Media Way," said Durst the developer of the Conde Nast Building.

Prudential, which also was the seller of the Conde Nast and Reuters sites, is selling all the Times Square real estate it purchased in the 1980s when it hoped to develop four signature office towers in a Jackson's ruling stemmed from a Justice Department lawsuit contending Microsoft violated a 1995 court order aimed at preventing anti-competitive practices. The government sought a $1 million-a-day fine if the company refused to obey a contempt finding. Separately, officials from nine states fresh from winning an unprecedented settlement with the tobacco industry have joined forces again to consider a national anti-trust battle of their own against the software giant Along with New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco, the ether states are Florida, Connecticut California, Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. Mm Wb SvrvteM in WASHINGTON The Justice Department yesterday urged a federal judge to hold Microsoft in contempt of an earlier order in an anti-trust lawsuit involving Windows computer software, and accused the company of cynically trying to evade the will of the court "Microsoft's naked attempt to defeat the purpose of the court order and to further its litigation strategy is an affront to the court's authority," the government asserted in papers filed in D.C. Federal Court "Microsoft has cynically acted as if the preliminary injunction permits it to perpetuate the very (condition) the court enjoined," it added.

The Justice court filing is the latest volley in an anti-trust law.