The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 12

The Sun MONDAY, August 10, 1987 Beatrice to become largest black owned firm ECONOMY JNfearly half of U.S. patents granted to foreigners in 1986 gaged in wholesale and retail distribution of food, groceries and household products. TLC will own 55 percent of the business, which would make it the largest black-owned company in the country in annual revenue. Drexel Burnham Lambert which is providing financing for the leveraged buyout, will own most of the balance, a Drexel official said. In a leveraged buyout, a company's cash flow is used to repay the debt taken on to finance its purchase.

People familiar with the transaction said the management of Beatrice's international food business would have a small stake in the new company. The deal with BCI Holdings, the parent of Beatrice, is a coup for Reginald F. Lewis, chairman of the TLC Group. In three years, TLC has grown from an investment group with $1 million in equity to majority owner of one of the largest international food businesses. Lewis formed the TLC Group to acquire other companies.

Its most notable deal previously was the purchase of the McCall Pattern a maker of sewing patterns. TLC purchased McCall for $1 million in 1984 and sold it last The New York Times NEW YORK The TLC Group, a New York investment firm, has agreed to buy the Beatrice International Food Co. from the parent of the Beatrice Cos. for $985 million, TLC officials said Sunday. The international food unit, based in Chicago, comprises 64 companies in 31 countries.

It reported $2.5 billion in sales last year and operating income of $147 million. The company manufactures confectionaries, snacks, processed meats, beverages and other food products and is en illiftlii iiiiiiiiiiii? ers last year accounted for almost half of the patents granted Ey the U.S. government with the argest number going to the Japanese, the head of the U.S. Patent Office said Saturday. Patent Commissioner Donald J.

Quigg said the heavy demand by foreigners for patents Jvas a disturbing trend that showed the United States is los- ng ground in the development bf new technology in this the bi centennial year of the Constitu tor, the document that estab-ished the patent system. too many years, we have done far too little to ensure hat by our next centennial one fifour most precious national feasures, the American inven (Report: Office occupancy rates improve YORK Office occupancy rates averaged 81.2 percent throughout North America last spring, showing signs of stabilizing after five years of continued declines, according to a report released last week. The Building Owners and Managers Association International said that of the 44 metropolitan areas it surveyed during the first quarter, occupancy rates stood at 85.4 percent in downtown areas and 76.6 percent in the suburbs. During the last quarter of LABOR Complaint filed against SAN DIEGO A union representing striking General Dynamics machinists filed a complaint against the aerospace company, alleging the defense contractor is using strikebreakers to fill vacancies created by the walkout. Company officials dispute the union's claims as "totally without merit." The union's complaint, filed a is a tor, will still be a surviving spe cies, Quigg said in a report to the American Bar Association's patent and trademark section.

U.S. residents were granted 38,124 patents last year, 54 percent of the total, while foreigners from 100 countries accounted for nearly 33,000 of the patents granted last year, the report said. The Japanese were awarded two of every five foreign patents for a total of 13,857 in 1986, by far the largest number of any foreign nation. Quigg said that where 20 years ago, American inventors obtained 50 times the number of patents that Japanese inventors obtained, that ratio had shrunk to less than 3-to-l last year. 1986, the first time the survey was conducted, occupancy rates averaged 82.4 percent.

For downtown areas it was 86.2 and for the suburbs 78.6 percent. "Despite a slight decline in the spring numbers, office occu-pancy rates are stabilizing across North America, signaling a renewed vitality for the office building industry," said William E. Carleton, president of BOMA International. Occupancy rates had been declining continuously over the past five years, the group said. General Dynamics Friday in Superior Court, charges that General Dynamics and a Los Angeles-based employment agency have violated state code that bars employers from "sending employees to any place where a strike, lockout or labor dispute exists." The violation of the state Business and Professions Code a misdemeanor punishable by maximum $1,000 and six months in jail.

chairman and chief executive officer of the company, said the firing of 55 employees would be accompanied by reduced capital expenditures and other cost-cutting measures. Kingsborough said he is optimistic that sales for fiscal 1988 will be higher than last year's $327 million. improve the rental housing industry through continuing education to owners and managers. John West, president-elect of the California Apartment Association, will conduct the workshop. Reservations are not required.

For more information, call (714) 981-3353. in the construction industry. Paige Roush, deputy registrar for the state Department of Consumer Affairs, will be the guest speaker. Cost is $10. For reservations or information, call Baldy View Region at (714) 981-2997 or Riverside County Region at (714) 781-7310.

From Sun News Services DANIEL A. ANOERSONThe Sun Art Townsend, Precinct-Reporter publisher, checks pages before they go to the press. Precinct-Reporter's Townsend: Publisher, politician, advocate Worlds of Wonder cuts jobs 15 percent month for $90 million to the John Crowther Group, a British textile conglomerate. The Beatrice transaction makes Lewis a much more prominent player on Wall Street. Before selling McCall, TLC was ranked sixth on Black Enterprise magazine's list of the na tion's largest blacK-ownea companies.

With the acquisition of a controlling interest in Beatrice's international food business, TLC would far outpace what has previously been the nation's largest black-owned business, the Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Co. Cellular car phones not so hot Professional thieves know about obstacles By BRUCE GRANT McClatchy News Service SACRAMENTO Stealing cellular car phones is like stealing marked currency the theft is revealed when you try to use them. Cellular car phones have several serial numbers at least one of which is electronic and not obvious to the uninitiated. It's that electronic number that foils the thief or the (knowing or unsuspecting) buyer of stolen merchandise. "Professional thieves know about this that a stolen cellular phone won't do them any good.

But, amateurs will try it (theft) anyway," said Michael V. Wilson, general manager of Excell Communications of Sacramento, a cellular-phone retailer. Wilson, whose firm deals with most cellular-phone carriers in the United States, said a portable cellular phone was stolen from his showroom this spring. When someone tried to use it about a week later, it took the Sacramento County Sheriffs Department just three days to locate the unit and return it to him, Wilson said. That electronic serial number was a key to the recovery of the unit, Wilson said.

He explained how the system works: When a person buys a cellular car phone, the electronic serial number is sent to a local carrier, like Pac Tel Cellular in Sacramento. Whenever the legal owner of the phone places a call, the electronic number is automatically compared with the one on file. If a phone has been stolen and the rightful owner has reported the theft to the carrier, the automatic mechanism will reject the call placed by the illegal user. Each call, accepted or rejected, is recorded by time, date and number called. It doesn't take too much detective work to trace those calls, Wilson said.

With a national network of carriers alerted to stolen cellular phones, it's fairly easy to track them down anywhere in the country. Wilson said his firm has found three or four units in the Sacramento area that had been reported stolen in other states. "Stolen cellular phones are not much of a problem now," Wilson said. "There are about 800,000 in use nationally about! 11,000 of which are in the Sacramento area. We've had less than 1 percent reported stolen." Nevertheless, insurance rates for cellular phones have risen in the past 18 months, Wilson said.

"It used to cost about $30 a year' with no deductible for a permanently mounted unit," he said. "Now, it's 5 percent of the pur-See PHONESB5 this week Paul Volcker Will step down on Tuesday mm it I riii Jif Monday focus tiA FREMONT Worlds of Wonder the toy company that wowed children and investors with such successes as Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag before stumbling with big losses recently, announced Friday it is its workforce by 15 percent Donald D. Kingsborough, CALENDAR Rental property investment workshop set UPL AN A free workshop on rental property investing will be offered by the Affiliated Cities Rental Owners Association from 7 to 9 p.m. on Aug. 19 at the Inland Empire Board of Realtors, 101 N.

Second here. The workshop is designed to Seminar for purchasing agents slated started. The early years were mostly trial and error. "None on the staff had any training. Everything that was said was written down from the gut." At first, news was gathered in a small office on Mount Vernon Avenue.

Typesetting, paste-up and printing were handled by a Riverside firm. The business relocated to its current site, 1673 W. Base Line, in 1968. His partners left. The Precinct-Reporter got its first primitive typesetting and headline machines shortly thereafter.

Townsend started another paper, the Tri County Bulletin, in 1984. The Precinct-Reporter got a new typesetter five years ago, but the staff of six full-timers still puts the paper to bed by hand on Wednesdays. In addition to pasteup, staff members report, proofread and sell ads. The paper is mailed out and delivered on Thursdays to homes, businesses, liquor stores and churches. Felix Castaneda, 36, a sales clerk at Catoes Liquor Store, 1127 W.

Base Line, said the paper moves as well as its competitors. "If people want an honest opinion, they go for the Precinct-Reporter," he said. Bill Jacocks said people anxiously head for the paper at his church on Sunday mornings. "If they're not careful, they might find themselves reading it, when they should be reading the See TOWNSENDB5 steps down from exploding, will be staying on as a consultant at the Fed for the next several weeks and debt negotiations likely will be one of the prime topics of discussion with Greenspan. During his confirmation hearing, Greenspan sounded very much like Volcker with one notable exception, the area of banking deregulation.

Greenspan expressed support for faster and broader deregulation of the banking system than Volcker has been willing to grant. While Volcker always stressed the need to preserve stability and soundness in the banking system, Greenspan said he be-lieved banks needed wider latitude to offer new services because of increasing competition from brokerage firms and other non-bank enterprises. Greenspan's nomination was approved last week on a 91-2 Sen-See GREENSPANB5 By JANICE MAZUREK Special to the Sun SAN BERNARDINO Art Townsend liked the phrase so much that he put it on his newspaper's first edition in 1965. "I wholly disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," wrote Voltaire, the French philosopher. Some 22 years later, the phrase remains on the cover of the Precinct-Reporter, Town-send's weekly newspaper serving a mostly black readership in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

It's a phrase Townsend still takes to heart. "We've developed many powerful enemies," he said. "We've been told time and time again, 'You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't say that. People won't like you Our objective is not to be loved.

Respect is more important." Publisher, politician, real estate developer and activist, Townsend, 66, found the print media effectively merged his many interests. In his weekly column, "People and Politics," Townsend has let few public issues or officials escape his ire. Unlike mainstream media, Townsend and his paper play advocate, especially when it comes to San Bernardino's West Side, an area plagued by economic decline: the decade, are improving but at a very slow pace. The Third World debt situation is still a major crisis and inflation, which all but disappeared in the United States last year, is posing a potential threat again because of rising food and energy costs. At his confirmation hearings, Greenspan sounded like he might try to out-Volcker Volcker as an inflation-fighter, declaring, "It is absolutely essential that (the Fed's) central focus be on restraining inflation.

If that fails, then we will have very little opportunity for sustained long-term economic growth." The central bank tries to control inflation through its power over the growth of the money supply. Its goal is to support healthy economic growth while guarding against pumping out so much money that inflation is rekindled. In April, the Fed tightened ITn tin fl HI Oti rttn Tin Ml IHl "You may not always agree with him, but you will respect the person," said W.H. "Bill" Jacocks, 44, former president of Westside Action Group. Townsend's message is simple: "Everything is political." "He preaches that you have to get involved in the system, that numbers make a difference," Jacocks said.

A UCLA graduate and World War II veteran, Townsend moved to San Bernardino in 1937. In addition to publishing and real estate, Townsend has been in the center of city politics. He made several unsucessful bids at city office and ran for mayor three times. Townsend, along with two partners, started the Precinct-Reporter in 1965 as an alternative to the violence breaking loose during the civil rights movement. "A newspaper was probably one of the most effective instruments that could be used in the civil rights movement, outside of burnings," he said.

"I've never been a violent man, so I went into the newspaper business." Townsend said he was relatively inexperienced when he the money supply slightly in order to support the dollar, which at the time was falling rapidly. But since that time, the Fed has essentially been in neutral, as the dollar stabilized and investor fears about inflation subsided. Many analysts believe the Fed will continue on this middle-of-the-road approach for the foreseeable future while Greenspan learns the ropes and tries to develop a consensus among the other five Reagan appointees on the board. "It will take him some time to marshall enough evidence to get the board to embark on a series of moves to control inflation," said David Jones, an economist with Aubrey G. Lanston a government securities dealer.

Greenspan's first test may well come in the area of Latin American debt. Volcker, who has spent the past five years crafting solutions to keep the debt bomb inheriting calm economy as Volcker RIVERSIDE A seminar jot purchasing agents will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. on 'Aug. 20 at the Sheraton Riverside, 3400 Market Street. Sponsored by the Riverside JJaldy View Building Association the seminar is designed to provide contractors with a chance to make contacts Greenspan WASHINGTON (AP) Paul 'volcker steps down this week after eight years as one of the most powerful economic policy-makers "in the nation, turning over the 'chairmanship of the Federal Reserve to Alan Greenspan.

The transition will take place during a White House ceremony Tuesday when the 61-year-old Greenspan takes the oath of office as the 13th chairman since 'the central bank's founding in r913. By all accounts, Greenspan, a Widely respected economist who served as chairman of the Council "of Economic Advisers under President Ford, will have a tough jac.t to follow. (r, Volcker is hailed as the man who liberated the country from jts worst economic predicament ss'ince the Great Depression, a long-simmering bout of inflation that had reached double-digit levels when he took office in 1979. ja. First appointed by President Carter, Volcker had to move immediately to deal with a plunging dollar and rising inflation.

By contrast, Greenspan is taking over at a time of relative calm for the U.S. economy. Unemployment has dipped to a decade-low of 6 percent while the economic recovery will soon set a record as the longest peacetime expansion in history. "Greenspan has been dealt the best hand that any new Fed chairman has ever had," said Michael Evans, head of a Washington forecasting firm. That is not to say that Greenspan will not have problems to deal with when he takes his place at the Fed's 30-foot-long conference table.

The federal budget deficit and the foreign trade imbalance, the twin deficits which have bedeviled the country for most of iii "i -IiTi rifc- fl 1TTT nMi ni.