DIGEST
Trafalgar House, owner of the venerable but troubled Cunard shipping line and its QE2 luxury liner, agreed to a $1.4 billion takeover by Norwegian shipping conglomerate Kvaerner. Kvaerner said it would pay for the acquisition partly by selling $1.53 billion worth of non-core assets, including the Cunard line and the QE2.</br></br>Pharmacia & Upjohn, a drug manufacturer created through the merger of Swedish and U.S. companies, said it will close 40 percent of its 56 factories and research fewer drugs. The moves are intended to save the London-based company $300 million in annual expenses on top of the $500 million in cost cutting already announced. The company also said it will sell its Stockholm-based blood plasma products business.</br></br>Compaq rolled out 35 new desktop personal computers and cut prices of existing models and accessories by an average of 15 percent. Digital Equipment responded to Compaq's move by cutting prices 6 percent to 26 percent on models it sells to businesses. Meanwhile, NEC jumped into the low-price fray with a product series called the PowerMate V, starting at just below $1,300 for models with Pentium 75 MHz microprocessors. And other major computer makers adopted the faster 133 MHz Intel microprocessor for laptop models in a flurry of product revisions.</br></br>T-bill rates were mixed. The discount rate on three-month Treasury bills auctioned yesterday rose to 4.89 percent from 4.86 percent last week. Rates on six-month bills were 4.80 percent, unchanged from the previous week. The actual return to investors is 5.02 percent for three-month bills, with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,876.40, and 4.99 percent for a six-month bill selling for $9,757.30. Separately, the Federal Reserve said the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for changing adjustable-rate mortgages, rose to 5.14 percent last week from 5.04 percent the previous week.</br></br>A former defense contractor was sentenced to 21 months in prison for concealing defects in a missile launcher that authorities said hampered fighter pilots during the Persian Gulf War. Raymond Herter, 71, vice president and general manager of the now-bankrupt United Telecontrol Electronics, also was fined $40,000.