September 22, 1992

Continuing the industry trend toward fewer but larger banks, the BankAmerica Corporation announced plans yesterday to acquire $7.5 billion of deposits from First Gibraltar Savings, a Dallas-based savings and loan, and the First Union Corporation said it would buy Dominion Bankshares, a $9.4 billion banking company based in Roanoke, Va. Both BankAmerica, which operates large banks in seven states, and First Union, which will now have large banks in six states, are old hands at acquiring other companies. Analysts expect them to move quickly to improve the profits of their new acquisitions by cutting costs. Each bank has smaller operations in other states as well.

With more than a hundred homeless families backed up in New York City welfare offices each night, Mayor David N. Dinkins yesterday announced an overhaul of the city's shelter system along the lines recommended by a mayoral panel that studied the issue earlier this year. The Mayor thus embraced a series of proposals that until now he had held at arm's length, saying in May that he needed 18 to 24 months to study them. And in so doing, he adopted the plan of the panel, headed by Andrew M. Cuomo, and appeared to go against the wishes of his own social services Commissioner, Barbara J. Sabol.

President Bush told United Nations members today that Washington was ready to support a greatly expanded role for peacekeeping missions and to adapt the United States military to better assist in such operations. But despite his stated willingness to promote the United Nations' role in preserving the peace, Mr. Bush did not offer ground troops for the 12 peacekeeping operations under way. Nor did he offer any new money for such tasks, or promise to pay the $733.1 million in dues and arrears that Washington owes to the United Nations.

Like one-bedroom condos in Manhattan, European stocks can be had at bargain prices. But buyers should question some of the bargains unless they are planning to stick around a long time, analysts say. France's half-hearted approval Sunday of the European unity treaty hardly lessened the risk that declining currencies will leave American investors with losses even if European stocks themselves rise. And with Britain stuck in a recession, France barely growing and Germany slowing down, higher stock prices are no sure bet.

When friends of Representative Ted Weiss went to pay their respects to his widow, Sonya, on Sunday night, they expected to find her sitting shiva in the family's living room on the Upper West Side. Instead, she was sequestered in a bedroom, beginning her last-minute campaign to succeed him, poring over the names of the hundreds of Democratic county committee members who will choose a nominee. Blocks away, City Councilwoman Ronnie M. Eldridge was holding an open house to promote her own candidacy in her apartment on Central Park West, trying to pump as many hands as possible, while visitors said her husband, the columnist Jimmy Breslin, darted about in his bathrobe, railing at the perfidies of the party leaders who might control his spouse's fate.