July 24, 1986

In a sweeping managerial shake-up, France's new conservative Government today discharged the presidents and chief executives of 12 of the 25 large state-owned banks, insurance companies and industrial groups that it plans to sell, replacing them with its own choices. The discharges affected the leadership of such internationally known companies as Paribas and Credit Lyonnais in the banking sector and Pechiney, Rhone-Poulenc and Compagnie Generale d'Electricite among industrial groups. The Government said the changes reflect the need to improve the performance of the companies to make them more attractive to investors and to insure that management cooperates with privatization plans. The dismissed executives had been appointed by the country's Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand.

Paul A. Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, complained today of ''massive international disequilibrium'' and urged America's trading partners to take steps to expand their economies to head off protectionism and other threats to an increasingly fragile world prosperity. ''Today the imbalances and strains are clearly showing,'' Mr. Volcker said in his semiannual appearance before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the economic outlook and the central bank's monetary strategy. ''Huge and rising trade deficits in the United States and counterpart surpluses abroad,'' Mr. Volcker said, prevented the United States from building ''a lasting foundation for sustained growth.'' He added, ''Nor can we count on satisfying indefinitely so much of our own needs for capital by drawing so heavily on the savings generated elsewhere in the world -savings that have been so freely available in part only because internal growth in Europe and Japan has been relatively slow.'' ''

Commercial production of the first genetically altered vaccine for humans was approved today by the Food and Drug Administration, opening what Federal officials called a new era for vaccine production. The new vaccine is intended to protect against infection by the hepatitis B virus, a major cause of liver disease throughout the world. Although a conventional vaccine derived from human blood has been available since 1982, the genetically engineered version will greatly increase the potential supply and could ease widespread fears of contamination that have discouraged use of the conventional product, Government and industry officials said. AIDS and other diseases, including hepatitis B, can be passed by contaminated blood products. However, no cases of AIDS or hepatitis B have been attributed to the conventional hepatitis vaccine.

The draft report of a special mayoral commission recommends sweeping revisions in New York City policies to give Hispanic people greater participation in all facets of city government, according to some commission members. The recommendations would add a Hispanic member to the Board of Education, establish targets for increasing the number of Hispanic city managers and change the way city-owned property is developed, the commission members said. The 14-member panel, the Mayor's Commission on Hispanic Concerns, was appointed last October and is to deliver its final report to Mayor Koch in September after consulting further with agency heads, the Mayor and community leaders. As a result of these discussions, members said, the draft is likely to be revised but will probably not differ substantially from what they have already agreed upon.

The new president of the Board of Education, Robert F. Wagner Jr., yesterday set 1989 as a target date for publicly funded prekindergarten classes for 4-year-olds. He said it would cost about $100 million over three years to establish the program. Of the city's 100,000 4-year-olds, about 60,000, most of them from affluent families, attend prekindergarten sessions in private schools and publicly financed day care and Head Start programs, Mr. Wagner said. The remaining 40,000, largely from poor families, remain unserved.