Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 3, 1993 TAG: 9312030187
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BRUSSELS, Belgium - U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher warned Thursday that failure to secure a global trade accord would undermine Europe's security links to the United States.
Christopher brought out into the open what NATO and U.S. officials have been suggesting for weeks: that failure to achieve a world trade accord would impair overall U.S.-Europe relations.
"Advancing Atlantic security requires us not only to renew the NATO alliance, but also to successfully conclude" world trade talks, Christopher said after a NATO foreign ministers meeting.
"If the GATT round fails . . . it will inevitably have an adverse effect on the [U.S.-Europe] relationship," he said. - Associated Press
Volvo leader quits; Renault deal ailing
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Volvo Chairman Pehr G. Gyllenhammar resigned Thursday, indicating a merger that he negotiated with French carmaker Renault probably is doomed. Three other members of the Volvo board also resigned.
Gyllenhammar had been under fire for negotiating a deal that critics said threatened Swedish shareholders' long-term interests.
The plan would have merged Volvo's car and truck-making operations - Sweden's biggest private industrial company - with Renault, a state-owned company four times Volvo's size. Included would be Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp., which operates a 1,400-worker plant in Dublin, Va.
Volvo President Soren Gyll said the Renault deal had been "put aside" and a shareholders' meeting scheduled for next week to vote on the merger was canceled.
Gyllenhammar announced his resignation after an extraordinary meeting with top management. He said Volvo's three-year alliance with the state-owned French company - sharing research, purchasing and shares in each other - probably would be dismantled by Renault. - Associated Press
Stroke sidelines Sony chairman
TOKYO - Akio Morita, co-founder and chairman of Sony Corp. and the leading statesman of Japan's business community, has suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that will force his withdrawal, at least temporarily, from company activities and from his increasingly prominent role as soother of trade tensions between the United States and Japan.
Sony officials said Thursday that Morita had been taken to a Tokyo hospital Tuesday morning after feeling ill while playing tennis. His condition was diagnosed, and he underwent immediate surgery to remove blood from his brain.
The four-hour operation went well, and "his recovery is quite satisfactory," Tsunao Hashimoto, a deputy executive president at Sony, said at a hastily called news conference Thursday afternoon. But he said it was too early to say when, or if, Morita could resume his business activities.
- The New York Times
Briefly . . .
Georgia-Pacific Corp.'s chairman, Marshall Hahn, retired Thursday on his 67th birthday, and A.D. "Pete" Correll, who has been the company's president and chief executive officer since May, assumed the responsibilities of chairman and chief executive officer of the Atlanta-based forest products company. Hahn, former president of Virginia Tech, is a Montgomery County resident.
Westmoreland Coal Co. said it has terminated its proposed sale of its Westmoreland Energy Inc. subsidiary to California Energy Co. The companies had said California Energy would pay $57 million plus other considerations for the unit. But California Energy said it found financial and legal issues that affected its valuation of Westmoreland Energy. Westmoreland Coal has coal operations in Western Virginia.
by CNB