March 26, 1993

I.B.M. plans to announce today that Louis V. Gerstner Jr. will become chief executive of the struggling computer giant, according to a person familiar with the search. Mr. Gerstner, 51, who is chairman of the RJR Nabisco Holdings Corporation, would be the sixth chief executive in the 79-year history of the International Business Machines Corporation, and the first picked from outside the company's ranks.

In his company's latest proxy statement, Sam L. Ginn, the chief executive of the Pacific Telesis Group, reported earning millions of dollars more in stock options than he had to divulge under new Government rules. So did John F. Welch Jr., the chief executive of the General Electric Company, and John F. Akers, the outgoing chief executive of I.B.M. More than half of all chief executives will probably join them by the time the year's proxy statement season ends this spring. Motive Not Apparent Shareholders may well wonder what is going on, especially because the chief executives are being egged on by the Business Roundtable, an ordinarily conservative group representing 200 of the nation's chief executives. Is it a case of collective guilt? Or has the business elite capitulated to the shareholder activists who pick on their lucrative pay packages?

Campaign Finance Battle The White House offered to compromise on new limits for campaign financing, but it still met opposition from House Democrats. Page A16. Quandary Over Stray Dogs Concerned about its image, the A.S.P.C.A. plans to stop killing stray dogs in New York City, and the city may have to take over. Page B1. Company Guilty in Boycott Baxter International will pay about $6 million in Government penalties for cooperating with the Arab economic boycott of Israel. Page D1. New Israeli Opposition Chief The Likud Party changed generations with the election of its new leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Page A2.

As the House did last week, the Senate approved a five-year budget outline that is almost identical to that proposed by President Clinton last month.

PRINCE is a lover, not a fighter, and not a deep thinker, either. He has a cornucopia of songs that bump and grind, songs that whisper erotic endearments and songs that command listeners to party: so many that even Wednesday's concert at Radio City Music Hall, with two and a half hours of music, was only a sampling. It was the first of three Radio City shows, to be followed by an invitational concert tomorrow night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The concerts let loose a performer who can do everything: sing, dance, play all the instruments (although this time, he doesn't show off his drumming), and rework pop and rock genres from silky falsetto soul to James Brown's funk to triumphal Jimi Hendrix-style guitar solos. He has been making albums since 1978, most of them as a one-man band, and while rhythms and techniques have evolved through the years, Prince's ambition to be all seducers to all listeners has barely wavered. The attempts he made at social relevance in the mid-1980's have vanished; now, it's back to the bedroom.