September 2, 1993

The Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday will witness a relatively rare event -- the initial public listing of a fast-growing technology start-up. The start of trading in DDI Corporation, a long-distance and cellular telephone company, is part of a revival in initial public offerings that is beginning in Japan as the stock market seems to have recovered somewhat from its slump of the last two years.

A California home builder recently raised a pile of money by selling notes that promised a startlingly high 10.375 percent interest rate with a rating below investment grade. Using the draw of high yield, the home builder collected $155 million, attracting investors to the troubled world of real estate even though the company was already behind or in default on about $143 million in loans -- a fact that was presumably reflected in the low credit rating. A yield of around 20 percent was reportedly the draw in another real estate deal, this one from Daiwa Securities America, the American arm of the big Japanese brokerage firm. It turned a package of nursing-home mortgages into five classes of securities: three with investment-grade ratings and two with considerably more credit risk. One -- sold privately, and therefore not publicly described -- reportedly yielded around 20 percent.

American consumers increased their spending for the fourth straight month in July, the Commerce Department reported today, a sign that the economy continued to grind ahead slowly. The latest rise, four-tenths of 1 percent, came despite an overall decline in income that reflected the costs of the Midwest flooding.

A faulty respirator supplying oxygen to an elderly woman at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn exploded early yesterday morning, killing the woman and two other patients, the Fire Department said. A fire official said hospital engineers had worked on the respirator several hours before the explosion, after nurses and other workers complained that it was giving electrical shocks.

NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL OPENING WILL BE DELAYED New York City officials said that classes for the city's one million schoolchildren would not begin on time on Sept. 9 because of the asbestos crisis. They said that they had not decided when to open schools, but that it would probably not be until Sept. 20 and possibly as late as Sept. 27. A1. Ramon C. Cortines, the new Schools Chancellor, was not exactly extended a warm welcome to New York City, but he seemed to shrug it off. B3.