Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
August 17, 2000, Thursday 2 STAR EDITION
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 658 words
HEADLINE:
Business briefs;
Nation & World
SOURCE: Staff,
Bloomberg News, Reuters, Associated Press
BODY:
MetLife to provide banking services
NEW YORK - MetLife, the
largest U.S. life insurer by assets, said Wednesday it will acquire a small New
Jersey-based bank to offer banking and investing services to its customers.
MetLife said it will acquire Grand Bank N.A. of Kingston, N.J., which
had assets of $ 80 million and deposits of $ 52 million as of June 30.
Terms were not disclosed, but MetLife Chairman Robert Benmosche said in
a recent conference call that the company planned to make a banking acquisition
in the $ 20 million to $ 30 million range. The New York life insurer plans to
use the bank to offer new services to its existing customers who often receive
big payments from the company but aren't always prepared to invest them right
away.
New round of virus hits
bank's customers
WASHINGTON - A new strain of the "Love Letter"
computer virus is targeting customers of a Swiss bank, stealing their account
information and sending it off to the virus writer, U.S. computer security
companies said Wednesday.
The virus, known as "VBS/Loveletter.bd," is a
variant of the original Love Letter virus that circulated in May, and many
versions have been created using the original as a template.
This new
strain replicates itself using Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program, and includes
a resume. A previous Love Letter version had a resume as well, of a Filipino
student. The new resume is in German and represents a job applicant in Zurich,
Switzerland.
Novell earnings drop
as customers defect
PROVO, Utah - Novell, the third-worst
performer in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index this year, said fiscal
third-quarter net income fell 83 percent as the software maker continued to lose
business to competitors.
Net income for the quarter ended July 31 was $
8.6 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with $ 49.3 million, or 14 cents, a
year ago. Profit exceeded 2 cents a share, the average estimate of six analysts
polled by First Call/- Thomson Financial. Revenue fell 17 percent to $ 270
million from $ 327 million.
The Provo, Utah-based company, which makes
software to manage corporate computer networks, said it is still trying to
recover from three quarters of poor sales in the face of competition from
companies selling software to help businesses buy and sell goods on the
Internet.
Maker of Claritin gets
patent extension
NEW YORK - The wait for a
cheaper, generic form of the world's best-selling allergy drug,
Claritin, just got a little longer.
Drugmaker Schering-Plough Corp. on
Wednesday said the Food and Drug Administration has approved a
six-month extension on its Claritin patent
because the company performed tests of the drug on children.
Congress a few years ago agreed to give manufacturers extended
patent time if they would test their medicines on children.
The extra six months means the earliest a less-expensive version of
Claritin can be launched is December 2002, instead of June 2002. Analysts say
the extra six months can mean an extra $ 1 billion in Claritin sales, dollars
that might have been wiped out if it had to compete with a generic pill.
Claritin had $ 2.7 billion in sales last year, most of it in the United States.
Transportation head calls airline
summit
LOS ANGELES - Calling United Airlines "the poster child
for what is going wrong" in the airline industry, Transportation Secretary
Rodney Slater said Wednesday he is summoning the chiefs of all the major
carriers to Washington to discuss rampant delays and cancellations.
Slater said the hastily arranged summit, to take place Monday, will also
include airport and labor officials in an attempt to address the recent impact
of weather, scheduling and other problems.
He intends to take the long
view as well, noting that the number of passengers is expected to reach 670
million this year, a 20 million increase over 1999, and grow to 1 billion within
a decade.
NOTES: Bloomberg News, Reuters, the
Associated Press and Chronicle staff contribute to this report.
LOAD-DATE: November 21, 2000 
