Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408190021
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
George Jones will resign as president and chief executive of Rose's Stores Inc., the company announced Wednesday.
Jones, 43, who was hired three years ago to turn around the struggling discount retailer, is leaving Rose's to become the president of worldwide licensing for Warner Bros. Consumer Products, an arm of Time Warner Inc. The resignation is effective Oct. 15.
Jones' resignation comes two weeks after the Henderson, N.C.-based company filed a plan to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The reorganization is expected to be completed by April. Rose's Stores is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Hills operates 113 stores in 10 Southeastern states, compared with 215 stores a year ago. Among those closed was one in Blacksburg.
Knight-Ridder/Tribune
Drug companies in mega-merger
American Home Products purchased American Cyanamid on Wednesday in a $9.7 billion deal, creating one of the largest drug companies in the country.
The merger attempt had been an on-again, off-again hostile affair with Madison, N.J.-based American Home - which makes Advil and Anacin, Chef Boyardee and Gulden's mustard - having to increase its initial Aug. 2 offer of $95 a share to $101 a share.
Cyanamid, the Wayne, N.J.-based maker of Centrum vitamins, surgical devices and a variety of insecticides and herbicides, finally agreed to accept the increased offer. The $101-a-share offer was a premium of 60 percent over Cyanamid's share price Aug. 1.
The merger will create a drug, food and agricultural-chemical conglomerate with more than $12 billion a year in sales.
American Home, with 51,000 employes, recently said it would eliminate about 2,000 jobs. Cyanamid, also planning a restructuring, had said it would cut its 27,000-person work force by about 2,500.
New York Daily News
Hills adopts 'poison pill'
Striking back at a large investor who is seeking to oust four of its directors, the Hills Stores Co. said Wednesday that it had adopted a plan that would limit the ability of any shareholder to acquire more than 15 percent of its stock.
The company installed its ``poison pill'' after federal regulators granted the investor, Dickstein & Co. LP, an investment firm that owns 12.6 percent of Hills' outstanding common stock, permission to buy up to 50 percent of its shares.
Dickstein also has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to ask other shareholders to support its proposal to replace four Hills directors.
The investment firm is seeking to gain control of the board so that it can push through a stock buyback program that would lift the price of Hills shares. Dickstein contends that they are undervalued. The SEC is expected to make its decision on the request in two to three weeks.
- New York Times
by CNB