Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 44

tr- 7r i a Jf 3 A43 RENO AT LARGE V) The Sale of a Lifetime Health Easy Compared to The China Dilemma Viacom sells stake in network to partners By Robin Schatz STAFF WHITES i 1 cations Inc the Englewood Colo -based company controlled by cable industry titan John Malone Both Viacom and TCI officala declined to comment on the rumors cable systems which have a total of 11 million subscribers are in some key metropolitan markets such as Seattle and San Francisco where TCI also has a presence One term of a potential sale might be that Viacom drops its federal antitrust suit against TCI and Malone that was filed during the Paramount battle The sale could also give Viacom a convenient fallback position if its deal to merge with Blockbuster collapses analysts say Blockbuster chairman Wayne Huizenga has been putting public pressure on Viacom to renegotiate its deal because of the steep drop in stock price and Viacom officials are reportedly growing annoyed with pressure tactics Reports of a pending sale of systems to TCI certainly putting pressure on Blockbuster" Baid analyst Dennis McAlpine at Josephthal Lyon and Ross whether or not the rumors are true Sharon Armbrust a senior analyst at Paul Kagan Associates said the sale to TCI would make for both parties In its first asset sale since its $10 billion acquisition of Paramount Communications Inc Viacom Inc said yesterday it is selling its minority stake in Lifetime Television to its partners The Hearst Corp and Capital CitieABC Inc The sale of one-third interest in Lifetime a cable network oriented to women that reaches almost 59 million households is expected to be completed by April 4 and will bring the compaiw about $3176 million in cash Those funds will be used to help pay down debt from the Paramount takeover Viacom spokeswoman Nancy Bushkin said Under the agreement Hearst and Capital Cities will each increase their ownership to 50 percent Officials for the two companies said the sale would not affect programing Viacom officials Baid yesterday that this company prefers to be a 50 percent to 100 percent owner in all its ventures overriding strategy objective is to control said Bushkin Meanwhile Bloomberg Business News reported that Viacom is negotiating the sale of its cable television systems for about $22 billion to Tele-Communi NY Power Authority Pulls the Plug On Hydro-Quebec Electricity Pact By Jill Hamburg STAFF WRITER At ceremonies in the Great Hall of the People the vice premier of China showed up this week to cement a deal giving Intel Corp the huge US computer chip maker a mqjor lock on the fast-growing Chinese market On the other side of the world leaders were continuing to insist they are ready to take action by June 3 that could blow deals like this out of the water This collision course between China and the United States is the more vexatious because so much of the present administration economic strategy is trade-driven June 3 is the deadline for China to make significant progress on human rights or face the loss of its most-favored-nation trade status This would almost certainly produce Chinese retaliation And last week the Japanese prime minister declared that it not proper to force a Western- or European-type democracy onto It was a move that have been better calculated to both stiffen official Chinese resistance to US demands and underscore who would be the mqjor beneficiary of a US trade rupture with China the Japanese bilateral trade with China after getting off to a slow start has doubled in the last four years And if the Japanese are serious about reducing their trade deficit with the United States what better place to divert their exports than to the fastest-growing market right next door Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord suggested yesterday in a speech to the US Chamber of Commerce that there may be a new way to save the situation is still possible to reach a credible outcome between now and June he said The key word is of course One idea being floated is that the Chinese could be selectively punished that most-favored-nation status could be withdrawn only for state-owned Chinese companies The difficulty merely of deciding what is state-owned in an economy like China's would seem to doom this as a nonstarter Still Lend insisted an option principle it's a good theory and one should be looking at Lord said It takes a big leap of faith however to imagine that the Chinese leaders who have shown themselves so determined to be insulted would be gratified by a status that might be described as unfavorable nation" Anyway the pressure to find some accommodation with the Chinese is enormous Try to imagine a politician as skilled as Bill Clinton deliberately taking an action that might lose Boeing its huge Chinese aircraft orders that would put deals like Intel's at risk So as the deadline approaches two separate drumbeats seem to be rising to the Wei of a roar American critics of human rights record make a perfectly good case if sometimes a little shrilly when they say that it is dishonorable to do business with such people And businessmen with huge export orders from China make a case that it's madness to risk loss of such a market A solution that will satisfy both these groups as well as the Chinese is difficult to with Hydro-Quebec arguing that it helps further their expansion plans Environmental and power authority sources also said Consolidated Edison Co the main customer for the Hydro-Quebec power transported by NYPA may follow suit this week and pull out of discussions with the Canadian generator Con Ed has also been the subject of pressure groups opposed to Hydro-Quebec and the subject of dealings with the agency was put up for shareholder consideration in Con upcoming annual meeting Hydro-Quebec is the cornerstone of economy and the rejection by NYPA is big big loss" and calls their future growth into question said Ashok Gupta senior energy analyst with the Natural Resource Defense Council an environmental lobbying group based in Washington DC Hydro-Quebec spokesmen said the company was mid emphasized that it would still negotiate a power exchange with New York on a noobligation basis New electricity needs peak in the summer while peak in the winter There will be no penalty for cancellation and state legislators applauded the future savings economics of the contract said Eric Loder an assistant to state Assemb Paul Tonka head of the Energy Committee are extremely For the second time in two years a contract to buy electricity from the controversial Hydro-Quebec company has been laid to rest as trustees of the New York Power Authority voted yesterday to cancel a 19-year $5 billion deal scheduled to go into effect in 1999 The vote signals an economizing posture at the Power Authority as it rethinks the energy needs Change at the agency is being spearheaded by new NYPA President David Freeman as conservation the proliferation of independent power producers and low oil and gas prices have created an electricity surplus in New York At the same time deals with Hydro-Quebec have been unpopular with environmentalists economics of a long-term contract are no longer beneficial to said Thomas Frey acting chairman NYPA supplies New York City with one-third of its electricity and Long Island with about 7 percent Two years ago NYPA also canceled a $13 billion contract to purchase power from the Canadian company whose planned Great Whale project an expansion of its mega-generator in the James Bay area of northern Quebec would create a chain of dams flooding thousands of miles of Cree Indian lands Native human rights and environmental groups have been vocal in their opposition to anyone doing business Man Unions Love to Hate Gets Another Try at Airline Point Plan Falls Short IRS from Page A41 LORENZO from Page A41 Pilots Association which opposed application and that prejudiced the review ATX officials in New York said they had not had a chance to study the offer and had no immediate reaction A statement from the Air Line Pilots Association said the group was by the decision to grant a new hearing A spokesman for the department Hal Paris said its offer to reconsider is unusual but not unprecedented He said he could remember at least one other case involving a dispute between two airlines over an international route where the department made such an offer One longtime industry analyst said that in his view the case against Lorenzo's re-entry into the airline business was weak and the offer not surprising case been all that strong for said Lee Howard president of Airline Economics Inc a consulting company baaed in they can deduct those points is not going to motivate since they probably been itemizing their deductions which would include points will not have an Tucdllo said the IRS decision is just one more recent effort by the federal government to encourage home sales by lessening the amount of money that the buyer has to pay up front Another recent example of that effort he said was the recent FHA decision to lower its mortgage insurance premium to 225 percent of the loan amount from 3 percent Other agencies have lowered the down payment required to get a loan very hard to the impact of the IRS announcement he added probably has less of an impact in a market like this when conditions are all very good than it would in a market where things are much imagine Makes health care look like a snap Tom Incantalupo contributed to thii report LI a na to.