WEEK IN REVIEW

Another victory for women

Lew Lieberbaum & Co. (please call us First Asset Management Inc.), denying charges of sexual and racial discrimination, is paying $1.75 million to settle with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The figure, you should pardon the expression, is the second-largest ever in an EEOC sex case.

The suit involved allegations that women and African-Americans were called sexist and racist names, that women were groped, that female strippers performed at office parties, that pornography was distributed, that women workers were propositioned and that those who complained were fired.

Instead, the 17 complainants will share the settlement while the company, which renamed itself following a separate suit by three female former employees, conducts seminars on workplace bias and institutes a complaint procedure.

The private sex harassment suit continues.

Lieberbaum is in Garden City, N.Y., the same suburban oasis where Smith Barney’s branch is alleged to have contained a Boom Boom Room in which female workers were groped and humiliated while male workers drank. A federal judge in New York City was asked by both sides to approve a settlement in the case reached last November. The New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women opposes it as not going far enough, and two of the three lead plaintiffs also are against it because it precludes their taking grievances to court.

The settlement would cover 23,000 current and former female workers.

Deals galore

While everybody was ga-ga over the Citicorp-Travelers Group Inc. merger and the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s closing over 9000 for the first time, three deals in the consumer finance field might have slipped past your early warning network. Household International and Beneficial Corp. are combining in a $8.6 billion pooling of interests, Ford Motor Co. completed the $26.8 billion spinoff of Associates First Capital Corp., and Conseco Inc., the Carmel, Ind., life and health insurer, agreed to buy the ailing Green Tree Financial Corp. of St. Paul, Minn., for $6.5 billion. Conseco stock took a swan dive on the news, wiping out $1.1 billion from the value of the deal, which otherwise would have been worth $7.6 billion.

That was then, this is now

Unless Vladimir I. Lenin resurfaces, Phoenix Home Mutual Life Insurance Co. probably needn’t fret about its stake in River Capital International LLC being erased by government fiat. River’s Volga Fixed Income Fund invests in short-term Russian government and corporate debt. Lenin repudiated the debt of the Czarist government. Does lightning ever strike twice?

Dalbar ratings approved in ads

Registered investment advisers will be able to advertise the results of client experience surveys conducted by Dalbar Inc. The SEC issued a no-action letter clarifying its 37-year-old ban on testimonials.

Barriers remain

Black investors don’t have as much confidence as whites in financial advisers, according to a report commissioned by Charles Schwab Corp. of San Francisco and Ariel Capital Management of Chicago. They’re also less likely to regard themselves as financially knowledgeable, the survey by Yankelovich Partners Inc. reports. “There are some real barriers to increasing black investment in stocks and stock funds,” said John Rogers, Ariel’s president, who is an African-American.

Itchy feet

Lots of action on the job front: Timothy F. McCarthy quit as chief operating officer of Charles Schwab’s brokerage to become a buyout entrepreneur. David S. Pottruck, co-chief executive and president of the parent, will take over his duties. Mr. McCarthy had been with Schwab for 30 months, the last six as the unit’s president.

Stein Roe & Farnham in Chicago plucked four managers from VanKampen American Prime Rate Income Trust. They’re already at work running a $200 million institutional account for Keyport Life Insurance Co., like Stein Roe part of Liberty Financial Cos.

In the abandoning-ship department, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Inc. was able to persuade 10 foreign exchange professionals to jump from Union Bank of Switzerland. The new gang is headed by Kenneth Gettinger, 39, who becomes a managing director charged with building a foreign currency and derivatives section with his old pals. They follow 23 UBSers who joined DLJ last month.

Sad but true

Yup, soon there will be no free lunch, even if you work in the New York office of J.P. Morgan & Co. The investment bank has fed its 1,500 workers on the arm since beyond the memory of man, but times are tough all over in this global economy. Starting in September, employees will have to pay the tab. Of course 5% of the staff won’t notice. They’ve already been fired, er, downsized.

In other news…

What’s Worth worth? Fidelity Investments bailed out of magazine publishing, selling the publisher of Worth, Civilization and American Benefactor magazines to some of its senior managers and Greenwich Street Capital Partners. No price was disclosed. . . In the fire sale department, an official of the South Korean Finance Ministry denied that Goldman Sachs & Co. wants to buy two banks seized by the government because of mounting bad loans. . . BankAmerica Corp.is changing the name of its Chicago-based Global Equity Investments arm to Banc-America Equity Partners. Stand up and salute.

Prison? Not for us

Breathe easy. Attorney General Janet Reno said the Justice Department won’t try to put investment advisers and lawyers in jail for telling people to transfer assets so they qualify for Medicaid when they enter nursing homes.

The law took effect last summer, after Congress lifted the sanctions against old people who artificially impoverish themselves but left them in force for professional advisers who tell them to do so.

The New York State Bar Association, which had filed suit to have the law declared unconstitutional, will pursue its case anyway. Relentlessly.