BIZWATCH : MARKETS.MARKET LOGIC: The stock market resumed its 1996 ways on Friday with the Dow Jones industrial average Dow Jones Industrial Average The best known U.S. index of stocks. A price-weighted average of 30 actively traded blue-chip stocks, primarily industrials including stocks that trade on the New York Stock Exchange. charging to a 101-point gain to make up a nearly identical New Year's Eve loss. The Dow average finished almost 17 points shy of a record high, closing at 6,544.09. MEMO AUTO SALES Auto Sales The major producers of domestic automobiles report sales monthly. These numbers are seasonally adjusted by the U.S. Department of Commerce and are available to the public one to five business days after the end of each month. : Chrysler Corp. easily broke its U.S. sales record last year with a 13 percent gain over 1995, while General Motors Corp. posted a 3 percent decline as many of its oldest products ended their run. Chrysler said Friday that the 2.45 million cars and light trucks it sold surpassed the company's previous high of 2.21 million in 1988. Chrysler's 1995 sales were 2.16 million. GM sold 4.7 million light vehicles last year, down from 4.8 million in 1995. GM was hampered by an unusually high number of new product launches, some of which have been slower than expected, resulting in lost production. Among the major Japanese automakers that reported Friday, Nissan's U.S. sales declined 2 percent last year while Toyota's increased 6 percent on the strength of a 26 percent rise in truck sales. Ford Motor Co. and Honda planned to report their sales figures sales figures npl → cifras fpl de ventas Monday. CAR POWER: American Honda has formed a partnership with Rosemead-based Edison International Edison International (NYSE: EIX) is a public utility holding company based in Rosemead, California. Its subsidiaries include Southern California Edison, and un-regulated non-utility assets Edison Mission Energy, a power producer, and Edison Capital. for equipment and installation services for Honda's electric car customers to charge the vehicles at home and business locations. Honda plans to start leasing about 300 Honda EV Plus The Honda EV Plus was the first production battery electric vehicle from a major automaker with non lead acid batteries. Only 300 or so EV Plus models were produced and released. vehicles, which have a range of 60 to 80 miles per charge, in the spring at monthly payments of $499 for three years. Edison, which has a similar alliance with General Motors for the EV-1 electric cars, has installed over 100 owners' charging units and more than 50 public and workplace charging stations in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . It plans to install hundreds more workplace and public charging stations this year. TEXACO TEXACO The Texas Company :Avoiding a discrimination lawsuit by the government, Texaco Inc. has agreed to a settlement under which a federal agency will directly monitor the company's compliance with employment laws, lawyers involved in the case said Friday. The settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gives the agency the power to scrutinize every detail of Texaco's hiring and promotion practices for the next five years to insure there is no discrimination against minority employees. STOCKHOLDER SUIT: Walt Disney Co. stockholders sued current and former Disney board members in Superior Court Friday, alleging Michael Ovitz's multimillion-dollar severance agreement is a waste of company assets. The stockholders claim Ovitz was ``undistinguished un·dis·tin·guished adj. 1. a. Marked by no peculiar quality; not distinguished; ordinary: an undistinguished appearance. b. and unproductive'' in his 14-month role as the company's president, and that the defendants wrongly agreed to pay Ovitz up to ``$130 million or more'' in severance, according to court papers. Officials at Disney could not immediately be reached for comment. SOUTH KOREA: Thousands of shipyard workers in South Korea returned to work in a sign that a weeklong strike against a new labor law labor law, legislation dealing with human beings in their capacity as workers or wage earners. The Industrial Revolution, by introducing the machine and factory production, greatly expanded the class of workers dependent on wages as their source of income. was beginning to fizzle fiz·zle intr.v. fiz·zled, fiz·zling, fiz·zles 1. To make a hissing or sputtering sound. 2. Informal To fail or end weakly, especially after a hopeful beginning. n. . Auto workers stayed off the job. TO OUR READERS: A year-end summary of stocks will run in Sunday Business. CAPTION(S): 2 Charts Chart: (1) Dow Industrials (2) HERE AND THERE Current number of the number of people who own mutual funds. U.S.: 1 in 3 people. Latin America: 1 in 200 people. Knight-Ridder Tribune Graphics Service |
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