February 1, 1993

Companies A remarkable week in American corporate history ended with an about-face by American Express's chairman, who resigned just days after winning a board room battle. The turmoil at American Express, along with significant shifts at I.B.M., Westinghouse and Sears, signaled a shift in which shareholders are gaining more leverage over executives. [ Page A1. ] As Harvey Golub assumes the chief executive's job today at Amerian Express, he inherits several critical cases from James D. Robinson 3d. [ D1. ] Revlon's No. 2 executive is expected to step down. Insiders say Michael Hammond will be succeeded by George Fellows, a senior executive at Colgate-Palmolive. [ D1. ]

For the second time in a week, the American Express board meets today to choose a chairman. The leading candidate, Richard M. Furlaud, is poised to join the growing ranks of chairmen who are not also chief executives -- the better to oversee their companies' activities. In an interview last night, Mr. Furlaud stressed that the next American Express chairman should exercise oversight while entrusting direct management to the new chief executive, Harvey Golub. "The nonexecutive chairman is not the boss," said Mr. Furlaud, a former president of Bristol-Myers Squibb. "He or she should not be involved in running the business." Revolt by Major Shareholders On the recommendation of Mr. Furlaud, who leads the board's nominating committee, the board decided last Monday to promote Mr. Golub, then the company's president, but keep James D. Robinson 3d as chairman. The board also gave Mr. Robinson command of the Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage subsidiary.

Twenty-six years ago, hundreds of black children from Hartford stepped onto buses to go to schools in five nearby towns. They were pioneers, the first to take part in Project Concern, one of the nation's earliest voluntary desegregation programs between a city and its suburbs. The buses still run, yet Hartford's schools are far more racially segregated today. And so Project Concern finds itself at the heart of a lawsuit challenging the racial and economic segregation dividing Hartford from its suburbs, asking a judge to order what good will has not accomplished.

In all the tales of sudden death in New York, there are always the salient facts: the strange, sad circumstances of the final encounter, the grim details of weapons and wounds, the history of a life tragically cut short. There are such facts about the life and death of Aurea Bonnie Vargas. She grew up in a small town in Puerto Rico. She attended schools there and in New York. She became a bilingual teacher of handicapped children. She was 41 years old, unmarried and living at 202 Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. And she was killed last Friday when she stepped from her door, was seized by a fleeing bank robber and was shot through the heart in a hail of police bullets.

The Dallas Cowboys turned a close game into a rout so quickly, so decisively, so painfully for the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVII today that all the Bills could do was sing a familiar refrain: Wait till next year. The Cowboys certainly won't have to. In achieving a 52-17 victory before 98,374 fans at the Rose Bowl, they made a mockery of the Buffalo no-huddle offense, the Buffalo no-tackle defense, the Buffalo no-hold-on-to-the-football performance that marked this spectacle of what was supposed to be a close game between two talented teams.