July 25, 1991

The Federal agency that insures private pensions sought court permission yesterday to take over two Pan Am pension funds, worth about $840 million and covering almost 35,000 current and former employees, contending the airline had not set aside enough money to meet its obligations to retirees. If the court agrees, it will be the biggest takeover ever for the pension corporation. James B. Lockhart, executive directior of the agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, expressed concern at the same time about similar problems -- underfunded liabilities as they are known -- of several other carriers he did not identify, as well as companies in the automobile and steel industries.

Finance Minister Manmohan Singh set into motion today a range of changes intended to turn India's back on decades of insularity and government controls and to attract foreign money. Politicians and economists said the changes marked a turning point in the nation's economic history. "Let the world hear it loud and clear," declared Mr. Singh, an economist. "India is now wide awake."

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced today that he had reached agreement with most of the country's republics on a draft treaty for a drastically decentralized system of power sharing in the Soviet Union. By achieving a draft accord with nine of the 15 Soviet republics, Mr. Gorbachev has achieved a signficant political success on the eve of an important Communist Party central committee meeting, and next week's meeting in Moscow with President Bush.

When he became Governor of California half a year ago, Pete Wilson brought with him a reputation as a pragmatic, moderate Republican, a politician singularly adept at forging compromises. Since then, he has indeed demonstrated that skill, some say all too well. In the long battle over bridging the state's $14.3 billion budget gap, Mr. Wilson vowed never to raise the income tax but did just that. He sought reform of workers' compensation laws as a price for his agreeing to new taxes, but settled for a minor change. He tried to suspend a voter-passed initiative that reserves 40 cents of every state dollar for education, but retreated under lobbying by the teachers' union.

Three partners in Goldman, Sachs & Company, all closely identified with the "vulture fund" that produced large profits and angry clients for Goldman, will give up their general partnerships at the Wall Street firm, Goldman said yesterday. Two of the men, Mikael Salovaara, 37 years old, and Alfred C. Eckert 3d, 43, will set up their own vulture fund to invest in securities of troubled companies, Goldman officials said.