November 13, 1992

Bank lending to businesses has edged upward in recent weeks after a two-year decline that was widely blamed as a cause of the economy's downturn and weak recovery. Although the increase is still anemic by the standards of the 1980's, bankers say that loan demand is improving in many parts of the country, and corporate borrowers say banks are more eager to lend than in the last few years. Because banks accumulated more deposits and capital while loans were falling, they now have ample room to increase lending more rapidly if the economy grows faster. A Marked Improvement Loans to businesses held by the country's largest banks increased at a 1 percent annual rate in the last two months, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a marked improvement from the 7 percent decline of the last year.

The Caldor Corporation, a major discount retailer, bid successfully yesterday to acquire and reopen 6 of 11 department stores in the New York area that Alexander's closed in bankruptcy last spring. Caldor's offer of almost $120 million was approved by the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan during a session late yesterday. Caldor executives said the stores -- two in the Bronx, two in Queens, and one each in Yonkers and Valley Stream, L.I. -- will bear the name of their new owner, which already has two stores in the New York City area.

It would be hard to find someone who looks more like a struggling garage-shop inventor than Jerome H. Lemelson, or to find someone who looks more out of place in this sun-and-ski resort for the chic and the rich. At age 69, Mr. Lemelson wears a face pale and gaunt, a zippered gray sweater snarled with woolly balls. The pocket of his pale blue work shirt bulges with his eyeglass case, his notebook and his many pens. He is clearly a man more at ease flipping through technical journals than indulging in a round of golf.

Not so gentlemanly vampire, via Coppola. Teeming and gorgeously ghoulish.

The Ford Motor Company promoted Alexander J. Trotman yesterday to president and chief operating officer of Ford's worldwide automotive group, putting him in line to succeed Harold A. (Red) Poling next year as chief executive. But Ford's directors passed on the chance to give Mr. Trotman the company's No. 2 job as corporate president and chief operating officer, which would have more strongly formalized his designation as heir-apparent.