Selling a Rumor Short

If, as the 19th-Century philosopher Thomas Carlyle said, history is “a distillation of rumor,” then history is being made over at Union Bank. In case you haven’t heard, the rumor is that Union has been sold to Wells Fargo or Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank of Japan.

It’s become so persistent and disruptive to morale at the Los Angeles-based bank that an informal “rumor control” operation has been established. Witness a recent internal memo by Joyce Albright, secretary to the head of the investment banking division.

Under a heading, “Latest Rumor RE: Potential Sale of Union Bank,” Albright wrote: “Rumor Control asked me to pass the following message on to you: You are cautioned not to place any stock in rumors circulating in the bank. Mr. Harrigan’s memorandum of Sept. 11, 1987, is still the definitive information that we are operating under.”

That memo from bank Chairman John F. Harrigan seemed to merely stoke the fires by confirming that Union Bank’s owners, Standard Chartered of Great Britain, had put the bank up for sale.

Big and Private

Twenty-one of the nation’s 400 largest privately held firms are in Southern California, according to a ranking by Forbes magazine. Irvine-based Restaurant Enterprises Group, ranking No. 83 nationally with 1986 sales of $1.143 billion, is No. 1 among the Southland firms on the list. The firm was formed last year as part of a leveraged buyout of the restaurant group of W. R. Grace & Co.

Parsons Corp. of Pasadena is second with sales of $821 million. And Golden State Foods, also in Pasadena, is third with sales of $812 million. Safeway Stores, based in Oakland, is the largest private firm in the state, with $20.3 billion in sales. It ranks second nationally, behind Cargill, the Minneapolis-based commodities trading firm.

Crash Suited Them to a T

When the stock market plunged Oct. 19, Marty R. Roberts and Bill Cherry didn’t lose any money. But now they’ve joined those trying to cash in on it.

For those investors still licking their wounds, the two local entrepreneurs have come up with a T-shirt that says: “I survived the Black Monday 1987.” It shows a Rolls Royce at one end of a stock market chart and a shopping bag person at the other end.

Roberts, 27, an attorney in Santa Monica, and high school buddy Cherry, 25, a plant supervisor at Murwood Furniture in Monrovia, are selling the shirts for $12.95, plus $3 handling, through mail order. (“I Survived,” 712 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 19, Santa Monica, CA 90401). It was a “nightmare” pulling it together, says Roberts, who said they’ve received “volume orders” from such firms as Dean Witter and Union Carbide. He won’t say how many T-shirts they’ve sold. “We’re doing pretty well,” he says. “We’re in the black now.”

Aftershocks in Koreatown

What could the decline in the value of the Mexican peso, October’s earthquake and Los Angeles’ Koreatown possibly have in common?

Many Koreatown merchants say both the falling peso and the quake have helped trigger a decline in their business. “It’s all related,” said Kevin Jung, owner of the Jupiter Shoes store in Koreatown. For starters, merchants say that customers were spooked by the Oct. 1 quake. “The business has been very slow after the quake,” said one Koreatown jeweler.

Then, the decline of the peso made many Latino customers, who make up 50% of the clientele at some stores, more cautious about spending. Christmas shopping by fellow Koreans might save the day, said Okin Park, owner of the Galaxy Boutique, a clothing shop. But relief won’t come for a few more weeks. “They usually wait until the last minute,” he said.