The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • 49

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. 1993 BUSINESS THE RECORD D-3 Dp Poet to cut 4 ,500 more jobs Sets goal of $2 billion in savings The Associated Press WILMINGTON, Del Du Pont will eliminate up to 4,500 domestic jobs through mid-1994 as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting $2 billion in yearly costs, officials said Monday. An after-tax charge of about $375 million, or 56 cents per share, will be taken in the third quarter to cover employee separation costs worldwide, said the chemical conglomerate. The company earned $475 million in the third quarter of 1992. Du Pont's nylon business will' take the biggest hit, losing 1,600 jobs.

Other cuts will be spread throughout the company, with the exception of Du Pont's energy subsidiary, Conoco, which officials "Their fixed cost for their tradi- tional businesses have been about A $10 billion, and it has there for the past three years," he said. "So they have beaten inflation. But I haven't seen that in the earnings statements." This month, about 3,000 em- I ployees will learn that they are out of a job, and they will be off the payroll by Nov. 30, company offi- rials said. About one-third of -those layoffs will occur in Dela- ware.

At Du Pont's nylon factory in Martinsville, about 700: 1,300 workers will be let go by mid- 1994. About 100 jobs will be lost at nylon plants in Wilmington, while 175 will be lost in Seaford, the world's first nylon factory. medical products, printing, and publishing reducing the need for employees. Between July 1991 and the end of last year, about 9,000 employees took advantage of early-leave offers, saving Du Pont about $1 billion, officials said. All the cuts have yet to show up in earnings, said Leonard Bogner, a senior chemical analyst with Prudential Securities in New York.

The economy in Europe and the United States has been weak, and the company has used some savings for capital spending and for adding to its assets, he said. BISYS PURCHASING WIKSBURY FOR $E0M LITTLE FALLS Bisys Group Inc. has agreed to purchase the Winsbury a mutual-fund servicer, for about $60 million in cash. Little Falls-based Bisys said Monday that it will finance the purchase from cash reserves and a $40 million credit facility from its banks. Winsbury services more than $20 billion in mutual-fund assets for 20 mutual-fund groups.

It also provides fund-accounting services for more than 130 active fund investment portfolios and 30 common and collective bank investment funds. Bisys is a leading national provider of information processing, loan services, and investment services to and through financial organizations. AQUA BUOY TO BUY BRITISH STATIONERY CHAIN CHESTER The Aqua Buoy Corp. on Monday announced the signing of a letter of intent to acquire 100 percent of Stationery Plus, a chain of 26 discount stationery shops operating throughout the United Kingdom from a base in Leeks, England. The terms were not disclosed.

Stationery Plus markets to the public and small businesses, offering, among other items, personal and business stationery, school products, greeting cards, and commercial services. BELL ATLANTIC LEASING UNIT CHANGES NAME PARAMUS The Bell Atlantic TriCon Leasing a subsidiary of the Bell Atlantic changed its name to Bell Atlantic Capital Corp. as of Sept. 1. In explaining the reasons for the name change, its president and chief executive, Danny Lam, cited a switch in business focus from 85 percent leasing activity several years ago to less than 50 percent leasing today.

The new, less restrictive name better reflects the company's range of leasing, financing, and corporate financing services, he added. ALLIEDSIGNAL TO SELL FLUID SYSTEMS CORP. MORRIS TOWNSHIP AlliedSignal Inc. plans to sell its Fluid Systems Corp. unit, a company spokeswoman announced Monday.

No price has been set for the subsidiary, which is a major manufacturer of advanced membrane products for the water treatment and food processing industries. The company employs about 140 people and had sales of about $20 million in 1992. Fluid Systems is unrelated to AlliedSignal Aerospace's Fluid Systems of Tempe, which AlliedSignal is retaining. The company described the sale as part of its corporate restructuring in which it is focusing resources on its core aero-space, automotive, and materials businesses. SPELLING GROUP, REPUBLIC PICTURES TO MERGE LOS ANGELES Spelling Entertainment Group Inc.

and Republic Pictures Corp. said Monday they plan to merge in a deal valued at $93 million in cash and stockSpelling will pay $13 cash for each share of Republic stock and options and warrants for Republic shares will be converted into rights for 1.65 Spelling shares each. Spelling said it would finance the deal by selling 13.4 million shares in new stock to Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. for about $100 million, bringing Blockbuster's interest in Spelling to 70.5 percent. The merger is to close in January, i T-BILL RATES RISE TO TWO-WEEK HIGH WASHINGTON Interest rates on short-term Treasury securities rose in Monday's auction to the highest level in two weeks.

The Treasury Department sold $11.3 biHion in three-month bills at an average discount rate of 2.98 percent, up from 2.95 percent last week. Another $11.3 billion was sold in six-month bills at an average discount rate of 3.06 percent, up from 3.03 percent last week. The three-month bill rate was the highest since they sold for 3.02 percent on Aug. 30. The six-month bill rate was the highest since they averaged 3.11 percent, also on Aug.

30. In a separate report, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, the most popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, fell to 3.32 percent last week, down from 3.34 percent the previous week. A w-' said will not be affected by the layoffs. Du Pont has 66,000 chemical and specialities employees in the United States. The rest work for Conoco.

D. John Ogren, Du Pont's senior vice president, said the cuts were necessary to keep the company strong and competitive in a weak business environment. Already this year, Du Pont announced 1,300 layoffs resulting from corporate streamlining and consolidations. In May, the company consolidated 40 to 50 divisions into 18 business units such as nylon, Blue could save $500 million more through further cuts of 15 percent at its 172 million square feet of office and manufacturing space worldwide. The need for less space is largely a result of job cuts.

IBM has gone from a worldwide work force of 406,000 in 1985 to an expected 255,000 by year's end. An additional 35,000 workers will be trimmed by the end of 1994, Wilson said. But changes in technology also have made space shrinkage possible, he added, especially for sales and service people. "With beepers and fax machines, they are not as bound to the office," Wilson said. Dale Reiss, managing partner in the Chicago office of the Kenneth Leventhal Co.

accounting firm, said a number of shrinking companies are looking for ways to capitalize on unnecessary real estate. "Corporations have begun to focus on the fact that space costs are really bottom-line," Reiss said. "Every decrease in occupancy expense drops dollar for dollar, right down to the bottom line. That makes it worth a lot of effort." equipped, elegantly appointed. Gerstnerv shuffles I execs Aiming to trim IBM bureaucracy The Associated Press NEW YORK IBM Chairman' Louis V.

Gerstner Jr. continued the computer company's restruc- turing Monday, shuffling the du-' ties of top executives and discard-' ing a top-level management committee that would sometimes reach into divisions to settle problems. The moves were designed to encourage faster decision-making and end the IBM habit of bucking i minor disputes up the corporate ladder. Gerstner outlined the changes in a memo to employees. In realigning top management duties, Gerstner also signaled the -changing role of mainframe comi puters in the product mix of Inter-" national Business Machines Corp.

Formerly known as the Enter-'-prise Systems line of business, the mainframe operation has been re- named and placed under the same -executive who runs IBM's mid- sized computer production. The changes cap a summer of shuffling at IBM's Armonk, N.Y.,'-headquarters as Gerstner, who in April became the first IBM chair- man hired from outside the com- pany, evaluated its operations and staff and hired a handful of other outsiders to help at the top. IBM has racked up huge losses as it reduces its staff to cope with less demand for mainframe com- -puters. It remains the world's larg-1 est computer company, I and the executive changes illus trate Gerstner's priorities. For the time being, they end the i prospect that he will proceed with the decentralization that his pre- decessor, John Akers, had To raise its bottom line by unloading excess real estate, IBM decided to sell this complex In Franklin Lakes.

Both the building and the corporate campus are now empty. Big Blue dumping office space ED HILLSTAFF PHOTOGRAPHER The aggressive, balance-sheet attitude toward real estate represents a change on the part of many corporations, said Mordecai So-loff, managing partner of the Price Waterhouse Real Estate Industry Services Group in New York. In the past, he said, companies tended to stockpile space for future expansion and depended on rising values to take care of excess carrying costs. Such efforts may be enhanced by recent signs of liquidity in the commercial real estate Wilson said, however, that IBM's property sell-off is prompted purely by a decreasing need for space. Most of the space being dumped is leased, he noted, but there are some major IBM-owned properties on the block.

These include buildings in Franklin Lakes and in Purchase, N.Y. Cutting its quarters by some 40 percent Special from the Chicago Tribune IBM's dramatic shedding of office space nationwide is part of a trend: Shrinking corporations are discovering that they hold excess real estate to the detriment of their bottom lines. International Business Machines Corp. confirmed last week that it is nearing the end of a two-year process of reducing owned and leased office space in the United State by 40 percent a cut of 18 million square feet from the 44 million square feet it held at the end of 1991. At least one major tract remains on the market: IBM's complex on a 206-acre corporate campus in Franklin Lakes, which was closed 15 months ago.

Rob Wilson, a spokesman at IBM corporate headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., said the overall office-space reduction is expected to save the company $250 million annually. In coming years, he said, Big Ford, UAW mum as deadline nears tween the UAW and GM and Chrysler have been suspended pending the outcome of the Ford negotiations. "If you started letting stuff leak out, that might lead to rumors getting started. And then the next thing you know, you've got one or two local strikes," said Walter Whittemore, president of Local 737, a Ford glass factory in Nashville, Tenn. Major issues that remained unsettled included health care, job security, economic issues, and Ford's demand that UAW members contribute more to the cost of their benefits.

Salary issues historically are settled at or near the end of negotiations. "It's proceeding pretty much on schedule to, hopefully, reach a contract settlement at the appropriate time," said Ford Chairman Harold A. Poling, addressing reporters at an Economic Club of Detroit luncheon. The Associated Press DEARBORN, Mich. Representatives of the Ford Motor Co.

and the United Auto Workers union worked under an information blackout Monday, as they tried to finish writing a pattern contract for the auto industry before tonight's deadline. Activity was brisk on the second floor of Ford headquarters, where bargainers have been meeting in increasingly longer sessions since last week. But UAW and Ford officials provided no update to reporters or UAW locals. The talks at Ford will directly affect about 96,000 hourly workers at the No. 2 automaker.

But the contract also will have a bearing on agreements yet to be negotiated for General Motors 241,000 UAW-represented hourly workers and Chrysler 67,000 hourly workers. Contracts for the Big Three run out at 11:59 p.m. today- Talks be WdlGkuAllHieRooml)uNeeA mmm For those high level meetings. fully i 3 ,000 sq.ft.... host a trade show or conduct a sales meeting.

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"BJ might best be described as a prehistoric version of Huckleberry Finn: always in motion and always looking for new adventure!" cries the breathless press release from Barney's creators, the Lyons Group. BJ will join the show when the new "Barney" season begins Sept. 27 on PBS stations nationwide. The 18 new episodes also feature two new human characters, Julie and David, who are joining the rest of the Backyard Gang Tina, Min, Tosha, Shawn, Kathy, Michael, and Derek. Barney aficionados will note that Tina's older sister, Lucy, is missing from the cast.

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