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Show THE GORES’ TEX Page E-2 TRENDS The SaltLakeTribune _ pDusiness campuses around the country. Coca- Cola and Pepsi Cola are battling for contracts to be the exclusive soft-drink supplier at many schools. At stake are millions of dollars for the colleges and further exposure to young adults for the soda companies. Penn State University, with 23 campuses and 77,000 students, was the first schoolto sign an exclusive contract. It solicited offers from Coke and Pepsi and inked a 10- year, $14 million deal with Pepsi in May 1992. “Welookedatit as we could offerdifferent soft drinks and get nothing or offer just Pepsi products and bring in a lot of money the university wouldn't otherwise have,” school spokesman Bill Mahonsays. — The Associated Press QO ANNUAL REPORT CARD Manyof the executives who puttheir companies’ annual reports together should get a “C” for work habits, ac- cording to a survey by Yankelovich Partners of 168 managers responsible for their firms’ reports. The survey, commissioned by: paper manufacturer Potlatch Corp., found that while 40 percentof the executives start planning annual reports a year before publication date, another 40 percent don’t start until within six monthsof the big day. The survey found another 4 per- cent — probably the same people who were pulling all-nighters in college — didn’t get rolling until they had just four monthsto get the report in print. -— The Associated Press oO BEFORE YOU GO Fast Company magazine has some advice for high-tech businesstravelers: TIME MANAGEMENT Page E-8 Equity, én’t Bailing Out Utah Debtors Compiled by Cherrill Crosby CAMPUS CONTRACTS ‘The soda wars arefizzing on college SectionE we aig 4s SUNDAY/April 27, 1997_ BY LESLEY MITCHELL THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Utahns tapping their home equity to consolidate what they pay on credit cards,lines of credit and car loans are slipping deeperinto debt. { That’s the troubling trend at the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CC€S) of Utah. ‘The nonprofit agency, which aims to help peopleseriously in debt, counseled nearly 2,000 Utahns in thefirst direct-mail ads as well as through telemarketers. That’s because the Wasatch Front is home to thousands of people who bought homes before the market began to take off five years ago andaresitting on a substantial amount of homeequity. quarterof the year, a 30 percentincrease over the same period in 1996. Scott McCagno, CCCS chief executive officer, said a growing numberof people whoseek help have taken out home-equity loans. . Appreciation — which in Salt Lake County has averaged 12 percentin the past five years — also has helped “Atleast 85 percentof the people who take out home- equity loans(to pay off high-rate credit-card debt] don’t stop using their charge card, and within six months end up with balances once again,” he said. Becauseinterest can be tax-deductible — unlikeinterest paid on credit cards or car loans + home-equity loans have become a populardebtconsolidation tool. And the Wasatch Front has becomeone of the most popular markets amongproviders of home-equity loans, whotout them in an assortmentof print, radio, TV and Real-estate appraisal and consulting firm Free & Associates in Salt Lake City estimates Wasatch Front homeowners who have been in the same homefor the past eight years have an average of $50,000 to $60,000 in equity. Many have much more. to drive mortgage delinquencies in the state to a record low, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. That makes the Wasatch Front even moreattractive to marketers of home-equity loan products. Only 3.3 percent of Utah homeowners werepast due on their mortgagesin 1996,a full percentage point below the nationalaverage, said Brian Carey, an economist with the association. And losses on home-equity loans traditionally have been very low; lenders have increased the amount of moneyavailable to borrow. This spring, First Security became one of the last banksto allow homeownersto borrow up to 100 percent ofthe tax-assessedvalueof their home minustheir first mortgage, up from 80 percent. Someare even offering loans based on up to 125 percent of home equityor loans for homeowners with no equity at all To promote their home-equity products, banks have begun offering an assortment of perks, such as fre quent-flier miles and free televisions and VCRs. “In an economywith very solid job creation and home price appreciation, it’s very easy to take advantageof rising home equity,” said Jeff Thredgold, president and CEO of Thredgold Economic Associates in Salt Lake City. ‘People have piled on a substantial amount of debt. Few bankswili divulge any trends or data pertaining to their home-equity portfolio, and those that do worry about rising defaults in their home-equity portfolio: don’t want to be named But at least one bank, Zions, is reporting a “slight increase in defaults among their home-equity custom ers, said Scott Anderson, vice presidentofretail banking for Zions in Utah. McCagno of CCCS believes defaults on home-equily See UTAH DEBTORS, Page E-7 TCI Deal Stewards Of the Western To End Era At Tribune Paper Is One of Last Family-Owned Dailies BYKR MOULTON ‘THE ASSOCIATED PRESS When TheSalt Lake Tribune's Range parent companybecomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Te! municationsInc. laterthis ye: will end the era of local f. ownership of oneof thelast su Be sure your office or home PC is set up so you can dial in from afar. If you're traveling with a laptop, be sure metropolitan newspapers in the country. you've copied your files onto the porta- ble machine, and back them up with a floppy disk stored in a separate piece But don’t wax wistful with those who run The Tribune and ance, write down the phone numberto its sister papers. Jack Gallivan, a former pub: of luggage. Fora little low-tech insur- eall your computer's technical-support line, and the phone numbers for your onlineservicein thecities you willvisit. lisher who will remain on the Kearns-Tribune and TCI boards scoffs at suggestions that thereis anything sad about the sale. “I feel very happy that we've Put them on piece of paper in your wallet for safekeeping. — The Associated Press a donea greatthing,” says Gallivan whohas spent 60 of his 81 years with the paper. BACK TO MANAGEMENT101 Browse through the business section of any bookstore andtheshelves will be crammed with books abouttotal quality management, or whatever the man- There's a reason for his com fort: a decades-old relationship between the two companies helped Kearns-Tribune principals secure a management con: agement theory of the moment happens tract giving them control over the to be. Anotherauthor, Philip Himmelfarb, who describes himself as a corpo- newspapersfor at least five years. If TCI wants to sell them after that, the management company rate contrarian, suggests executives ig- nore what he calls the latest managementfadsandinstead focus on managementbasics. For example, he says, “plan and managestrategically, with the company's long-term business objectives in mind.” Also, know your customers and bedriven by their needs; focus on the bottom line; keep a watchful eye on what's happening outside the firm; cut back on bureaucracy;and never stop introducing new products and services, ed onit from the word go,” sumers increasingly concerned about ing Co. Because BYLISA CARRICABURU THE SALT LAKE TRIB DUCHESNE — The high-desert pla- animal welfare, several agriculture schools have put animal-behavior ex- teau that unfolds from the Uinta Mountains near here is an arid place where perts, or ethologists, on their faculties. Washington is increasing funds for re- sagebrush and native grasses engage ina tug of war for scarce precipitation. search on how livestock cope with factory-style farms. One recommendation: Scrap the 2-foot-by-7-foot metal crates that encase sows, which are intended to keep them from crushing their newborn and from fighting. Farm officials Some areas are badlands, says cattle rancher Allan Smith, places where even jackrabbits are hard-pressed to make a living. But it also is a place that has been home the bars of their pens, but industry- to the Smith family since the 1890s, when Moroni Smithfirst leased land from the Ute tribe on which his sheep could graze. Over time, the family acquired private are leery. that also relies on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Managementgrazing hope to head off charges that modern methods make hogs crazy. Hogs bite sponsored scientists say that is the scavenging instinct at work. Activists And some farmers worry land for a three-generation operation permits agendas workto help soothe the rancor- “If we didn’t care for and nurture this ous land-use debate that too often pits land, we wouldn't still be ranching it 100 them against one another, says Marietta Buyck, NCBAdirector of producer education. “It's a program that recognizes we can be partnersin preserving the land,” says years later,” says Smith, whose ruddy complexion speaks of decadesspent outdoors. ‘We love and respect this land as much as anyone.” Smith and his wife, Shirley, have nursed the often unforgiving terrain so well that they recently earned the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's (NCBA) Environmental Stewardship Award for the southwest region that includes Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. Winners are chosen by a panel representing the cattle industry, federal regulatory agencies and conservationists who see the program as a way to recognize gains made as groups with differing + eneee — The Wall Street Journal oO Farmers have exhausted stores of ge- netically altered seed. Most seed firms ran out of transgenic varieties weeks ago, Washington had cleared more firms to sell the seeds, which first hit the market last year. But coffee-shop chatter over the winter fanned a run on them. Some make weedkillers easier to use; others produce their own insecticide, “I've never seen anythinglike it,” says Ken Fawcett, an Asgrow dealer in West Branch, Iowa. He has sold three times as many bags of soybean seed en. » Thomas, Phillip and Sarah, whose the most seats on the management 40 percent ownership gives them should be recognized everywhere it comes from. It’s important to achieve a board TCI, the country’s largest cable balance,”” The Smiths — who maintain a 300head, cow-calf herd — since 1989 have worked with the Natural Resource Con- Tribune and its newspapers ir Salt Lake; Lewiston and Moscow company, plans to buy Kearns Idaho; Pullman and Colfa Wash.; and Sparks, Nev.; for $6. million in TCI stock by the end See RANCHER, Page E-4 See TCI DEAL, Page E-4 Columbia/HCA: Corporate ‘Pac-Man’ or Health-Care Visionary? BY MARTA W, ALDRICH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Beth Marshall doesn't know much about Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. except that her 3-pound, premature son is being cared for by doctors and nurses at oneofits 343 hospitals. Whenchoosing the birthing center here at Columbia Centennial Medical Center, she had noidea that Colum bia is a for-profit company and the nation’s largest health-care provider, aggressively buying hospitals across the country and sparking a debate about whether the growing segment of for-profit hospitals is good for bigness here. These people areangels.” From whereRep. Fortney “Pete Stark, D-Calif., sits, Columbia/HCAis anything but angelic. He's called the company, which treats 125,000 people a day, “a giant 1993 mergers with much larger Galen Health Care In ends: by those who would make a profit from care, and those who recoil wheneconomic decisions interfere with pitals and 147 outpatient surgery centers in 37 stat care ‘This is an economic tension that's square-pitted eyeto-eye with a philosophic, moral tension," said Rick Wade, spokesman for the American Hospital Associa: tion. in El Paso, Texas, Theinvestigation has helped send the careas a commodityto be bought andsold Columbia was bornin 1987 when CEO RichardScott and Fort Worthbillionaire Richard Rainwater bought a lumbia holdings All I care about is getting the best care for Zachary #0 that he can come home,” said Marshall, who delivered f 10 weeks early on March 27. “{ don't really feel the pair of struggling hospitals in E} Paso, Texas, and thena neighboring hospital which they immediately closed Within a year, the remaining two hadhigher returns. Against theybackdrop of managed care, Scott siyiek lumbia is under federal investigationfor its operations tal. Columbia was still a minor player in 1 and Hospital Corp. of America transformed Columbia into a $10 billion hospital powerhouse. As a commodity, hospitals are tugged at from both company's stock to its lowest level since July 1995 as investors worry that the probewill spread to other Co- Nor did the 26-year-old momand teacher know Co: with that strategy and Columbia grew hospital by hospi mere24 hospitals and revenues of $819 millic octopus that is gobbling up American health care. tent herbicide, Roundup, this year than last. Soybean growers will plant about 8 million acres to transgenic aged, 12 percent of their fields, But corn is off to a slower start, in part becauseit is more - fe Wall Street Journal The largest ownership segment of the management company be wildlife. “Fine stewardship of the land the country's health soybeans. management company the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group that works to preserveareas for gineered to tolerate Monsanto Co.'s po costly. One bag retails for $130, compared with $24 for Roundup Ready Kearns, another great-grandson and a 30 percent owner of th longs to the McCarthey family er thinkers than believed, upsetting GENES AND OVERALLS Kearns-Tribune people will continue to run the newspapers, “It doesn’t quite feel like we've let go,” said JamesF Al Pollom, the Kansasstate director for such studies might show hogs are deepconsumers. said RobertSteiner, a great-grandso: of Sen. Thomas Kearns, a million aire silver miner who bought the then-anti-Mormon newspaper in 1901. Steiner, a shareholder and state senator,is one of seven own ers of the new management com pany, Salt Lake Tribune Publis} — The Associated Press oOo IT’S A HOG'S LIFE The study of livestock ‘feelings’ might redesign the hog farm, With con- noes hasthefirst right to buy them “That wasessential. We i Everyone's said health care should be more competi tive, and Columbia/HCA has brought that to the fore: front. But the American public doesn't perceive medical Today, the Nashville-based corporation own England and Switzerland, An affiliate operates more than 550 home-health businesses. Ranked No. 47 on the Fortune500 list, the company lists $20billioninassets, takes in $18billion a yea employs 285,000 people morethan either IBM General Electric. It owns 44 percent of the ion's f profit hospitals, dwarfing its closest competitor, Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Santa Barbara, Calif. For-profit hospitals makeup15 percent ofall U.S. hospitals At 44, Scott is one of Time magazine's 25 most influer he was a up-and-coming corporate merger and acquisition spe tial Americans. A native of Kansas City, Mo. See GOLUMBIA, Page E-3 |