December 5, 1991

A top adviser to the Maxwell family's publishing empire said today that the family was preparing to put its collection of private companies into the British equivalent of bankruptcy. The disclosure came in the wake of several developments that dealt what appeared to be a lethal blow to any last hope the Maxwells had of retaining control of much of their empire.

Charles H. Keating Jr., the Phoenix financier who has come to embody the troubles that decimated the savings and loan industry, was convicted today of securities fraud in connection with the collapse of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. A jury in a state court in Los Angeles found Mr. Keating guilty on 17 of 18 fraud counts after deliberating for more than two weeks. Mr. Keating faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Judge Lance A. Ito of the California Superior Court set sentencing for Feb. 7, and allowed Mr. Keating to remain free on bail in the meantime. The judge gave no indication of what sentence he might impose.

It made the biggest hit movie of the year, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," and it is pressing ahead with other expensive films, including "Basic Instinct," a thriller starring Michael Douglas. But Carolco Pictures Inc. is being buffeted by the same problems that killed most of Hollywood's smaller production companies in recent years. Carolco said today that it had laid off 50 people from its staff of 200 and that it was considering whether to end or scale back deals with a number of film makers. And there were widespread reports in Hollywood that Peter M. Hoffman, Carolco's chief executive, was preparing to resign after clashing with Mario Kassar, the chairman and largest shareholder, over the company's financial strategy. Carolco would not comment on those reports. Back to Basics

THE old adage says, "Never shop when depressed." But Judyth van Amringe was depressed. Very depressed.

The day that most Americans remember as a day of infamy resonates very differently in Asia. Here, Pearl Harbor is regarded as a sideshow to Japan's real ambitions in World War II -- the creation of a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," an economic and military empire that stretched from the coal mines of Manchuria to the oilfields of Indonesia. Fifty years later, in radically different form and with very different purposes, the co-prosperity sphere lives on. Over the last decade, while America's attention was elsewhere, Japan has poured billions of dollars and enormous energy into the region, building car factories and electronics plants here on the edge of the Malaysian jungle, employing thousands in the Thai countryside and erecting giant shopping centers and office towers in Hong Kong and Singapore.