April 13, 1992

How can a company best avoid disclosing how much it pays its top executives? The traditional way has been by listing salaries in the arcane argot of a proxy statement. But with today's renewed interest in executive compensation, the proxy statements sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission and shareholders each spring are coming under new scrutiny. Some investors and regulators even want them translated into conversational English.

Making clutch shots, key putts and being fortunate when he had to be, Fred Couples put the official stamp of a major championship on his standing as the best player in the world today by winning the 56th Masters. In gaining the first major of his 12-year career on the PGA Tour, Couples shot a final-round two-under-par 70 over a surprisingly resistent Augusta National course for a 72-hole total of 13-under-par 275. It was enough for a two-shot victory over Raymond Floyd, who duplicated his 1990 runner-up finish with a closing 71, and three better than Corey Pavin, who closed fast with a 67.

As a battered Gov. Bill Clinton nears the Democratic Presidential nomination, political analysts and politicians in both parties are debating whether President Bush will face a searching new inspection of his record, character, finances and conflict-of-interest issues involving his relatives, aides and associates. Bush campaign aides said last week that they were braced for a renewed critique of the President because of the rough tone of the early primaries, the controversies about Mr. Clinton's past and the Arkansas Governor's contention that he has been unfairly singled out.

Representatives of more than 100 of the world's largest banks will gather in Toronto this morning to review for the first time a staggeringly complex financial mess: the troubled Olympia & York Developments Ltd. And Olympia & York will come to the meeting without the man it hired only weeks ago to lead its negotiations -- Thomas S. Johnson, the former president of the Manufacturers Hanover Bank. Mr. Johnson resigned yesterday as president of Olympia & York, unable to satisfy himself with the company's compensation package and some of its strategies for dealing with the bankers.

State investigators said yesterday that excessive speed may have caused the crash of a chartered bus that slid off a wet, slushy highway in the Adirondacks Saturday and tumbled down a 70-foot embankment, killing 2 of 27 junior high school students heading home to Long Island from a trip to Montreal. As State and Federal investigators examined the crash and family and friends mourned the deaths of the 12- and 13-year-old victims, some parents and school officials traveled upstate yesterday to be with the terrified young survivors. Most of them returned home to East Meadow, L.I., last night on a chartered bus.