WEEK IN REVIEW

Rumors chasing Chase’s chasings

Chase Manhattan Corp. is the center of a worldwide tornado of rumors about its beating the bushes for a merger partner.

Merrill Lynch & Co. stock took off early in the week when its name came up, and later reports had J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse chatting with Chase at various times over the past few months.

The country’s biggest bank has apparently decided that the best way to build an investment banking powerhouse is to buy one.

Thomas Lebrecque, Chase’s president, says the bank is still considering “all the options.” Its CEO, Walter Shipley, is expected to retire in a couple of years and is said to want to leave a permanent footprint.

Meanwhile, Chase certainly is starting to look like a property preening for a stroll down the street.

It’s cutting 4,500 jobs and taking a $320 million hit in the first quarter to pay for them, but it expects to save $460 million a year. It’s the second round of firings since Chase and Chemical Banking Corp. merged two years ago.

Twenty-two hundred firings start next month and about half will be in the New York metropolitan area; the rest will come from making people work more when people quit.

Chase also said it was splitting its stock two-for-one and boosting its quarterly dividend (What! Dividends in the ’90s!) by 16%. Credit Suisse might like that.

Bridge to the 21st

Bridge Information Systems Inc. made itself No. 2 in the electronic financial news biz by cutting a deal to take over Dow Jones & Co.’s own Vietnam, the once and future Telerate unit. Dow paid $1.6 billion for it in the late 1980s and is letting it go for $510 million in cash and stock.

Bridge’s owners said they might start the new millennium by offering stock in the closely held company as a way to get some of their money back.

Dow took a $922.5 million charge last year — its first quarterly loss ever — to write down the value of the unit. John Morton, a newspaper analyst, says of the deal, “If they got anything for
it, they came out ahead.” Dow expects to take another “significant charge” when the sale closes before this summer.

Bridge is owned by a group of companies, including Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Goldman Sachs & Co. and Liberty Brokerage.

None of the 3,500 workers will be let go, a Bridge spokesman said.

Dow renamed the unit Dow Jones Markets. Bridge, formed mostly on the bones of Knight-Ridder Financial News in 1996, plans to trot out the old name, which it believes is better known abroad than its own.

The sale leaves Dow Jones with a 450,000-square-foot building nearing completion in South Brunswick, N.J., where it had planned to house Telerate, uh, Dow Markets, uh, Telerate. Anybody for a mall?

Going in circles

Magellan the explorer showed the way in circumnavigation and Magellan the mutual fund is showing Fidelity Investments the way to deal with growth. The Boston company is closing three of its most popular stock mutual funds to new investors as of April 3, the way it did with Magellan in September.

Freezing out new investors are the $40.9 billion Growth & Income Fund, the $32.2 billion Contrafund and the $11.6 billion Low-Priced Stock Fund. A Contrafund clone, Contrafund II, opens April 1.

A spokesman said the shutdown will help stabilize cash flows and make the funds easier to manage; analysts think the funds just got too big to get good returns.

Strange bedfellows

Just a year ago, Washington Mutual Inc., the nation’s biggest thrift, rescued No. 3 Great Western Financial Co. from the evil clutches of A.H. Ahmanson Inc. Now No. 2 Ahmanson (parent of Home Savings of America) is ready to snuggle into Washington Mutual’s warm and welcoming arms for $9.9 billion in stock — a 22.7% premium.

The deal will give Washington Mutual $150 billion in assets and stretch its reach from the West Coast into Texas.

Losers in the deal are the 3,500 workers expected to be offed; 170 branches are going, too.

Now here’s a good one

In a line worthy of Milt
on Berle and about as old, Vice President Al Gore said the Internal Revenue Service will move to “make the tax season easier, faster and in some cases cheaper for the average American.” He added that there’s even a plan to let small business owners file their quarterly Form 941 payroll returns by phone. He didn’t say whether somebody would answer.

A name that sings

New England Investment Cos. LP announced that come April Fool’s Day, it will be known as Nvest LP to “more clearly reflect the partnership’s status as a major investment manager with $125 billion in assets under management and better position the firm for future participation in the broader financial marketplace.”

Maybe it’s the haberdashery marketplace they’re headed for. You remember the old song: “The coat Nvest, they was the best, but Sam, you made the pants too long.”

Sex? Who cares?

It’s money, stupid — not sex — that explains the differences between men and women when it comes to financial decisions, a PaineWebber report concludes. Data in “Women and Investing” show that when assets reach about 100 grand, men and women behave pretty much the same.

A year-old study based on the Index of Investor Optimism seemed to show that women had a different perspective on finances than men do. The latest study says that’s true, but only if they don’t have as much to have perspective with.

Silverman’s golden

American International Group backed down in its war with Cendant Corp. over American Bankers Insurance Group Inc. after Cendant boosted its offer to $67 a share. That’s $3.1 billion for the Miami-based credit insurer.

AIG thought it had a deal when it raised its bid three weeks ago to $58 a share.

Cendant runs Ramada hotels, Avis rental cars and Century 21 real estate brokerages and wants to sell insurance by phone and Internet.

Some people also saw the battle as something personal between Cendant president Henry Silverman and AIG chairman Maurice Greenberg. Everything is sweetness and light
now. Sure.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report