March 31, 1993

In the United States, top executives lose their jobs when their companies sell too little. In Britain, it can happen when their companies sell too much. Three senior executives of the Maytag Corporation in Europe lost their jobs yesterday after a poorly thought-out promotion offering free travel in exchange for appliance purchases attracted too many takers and forced the company to take a surprise pretax charge against earnings of $48.8 million.

EMPIRE'S IN-HOUSE LARGESS BELIES CRISIS As Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield struggles with staggering financial losses -- more than $250 million in the last two years -- officials of the nonprofit health insurer maintain a decades-old tradition of high corporate living that belies the company's dire financial situation. A1. Files that disclose Empire's lobbying efforts leave out a significant name: Norman Adler. B6.

Wachtler Agrees to Jail Time After on-again, off-again negotiations, lawyers now say Sol Wachtler, the former Chief Judge, will plead guilty today to a threat to kidnap and serve about a year in prison. Page B5. When Law and Science Clash The Supreme Court grappled with the question of how a judge decides when a scientific theory is sound enough to be admitted as evidence. Page A19. Italian Scandal Widens Italy's Finance Minister resigned, the sixth member of the Cabinet named in June to be implicated in a corruption scandal. Page A3. Among the First Pink Slips I.B.M.'s decision to impose its first layoffs hit home yesterday for 4,000 workers in East Fishkill. Page B1. What Are They Even Called? Like the defunct empire they study, American Sovietologists are in disarray. Education, page B8.

I.B.M. will pay Louis V. Gerstner Jr., its new chief executive, a base salary of $2 million this year, a one-time compensation of $5 million for leaving his job at RJR Nabisco and incentive bonuses and stock options that can eventually add millions more. While it is lucrative, the Gerstner pay package, which the company announced yesterday, does not strike most compensation experts and shareholder advocates as exorbitant, given the challenge he faces at the International Business Machines Corporation, the world's biggest computer company. And they note that the big payoff for Mr. Gerstner will come only if he can increase the value of the company's shares in the next few years. He has been granted options to buy 500,000 I.B.M. shares.

The United States Supreme Court handed New York State a sizable financial headache today by ruling for Delaware in a long-running dispute between the two states over unclaimed stock dividends. Coming in the final hours of the state's fiscal year, the ruling complicated the last-minute budget negotiations in Albany. Among the complications was the uncertainty about the size of the problem, which appeared to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.