October 14, 1998

The American Home Products Corporation and the Monsanto Company scrapped their $34.4 billion merger yesterday, the third big combination in the pharmaceutical industry to fail this year. In a joint statement, the companies said the deal had been abandoned because it was not in the best interests of their shareholders. Yet, people close to the deal said yesterday that the merger was terminated because of an insurmountable power struggle between the two companies' chairmen, John R. Stafford at American Home Products and Robert B. Shapiro at Monsanto.

IT'S autumn in New York. A chill is nudging through the last trace of summer's warmth, and the leaves hint of turning. The signs can't be missed -- except, maybe, if you're a chef. After all the lip service New York's best cooks have given to seasonal cooking, some have decided that they will cook seasonally, all right, but they will be the ones to choose exactly which season. Just take a look at what's on the menu this week:

COMFORT food -- that buzz phrase embracing all the bland, soft satisfactions of childhood eating -- doesn't quite have the cachet now that it did a few years ago, when restaurants everywhere were trying to outdo each other in the evocation of home and hearth. But somehow, one of those quintessentially comforting foods, mashed potatoes, has not only held on in popularity, but also managed to ease right into the turbulent mainstream of today's creative cookery.

John E. Cleg horn showed what a formidable competitor he can be when he played center on the McGill University football team that won the intercollegiate championship in 1960. Now that he is chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada, the country's largest, and campaigning vigorously for Government approval to make it a lot larger by merging with the Bank of Montreal, he is acting as though he still thinks no one can get past him. From the look of things, however, he will need all the grit he can muster. Strongly backed by public opinion, the Government remains uncertain about allowing the Royal-Montreal deal or mergers by any other of the country's top five banks, which, with 93 percent of the industry's assets, dominate the banking sector to an extent unmatched anywhere else in the world.

Watching classmates strut past in designer clothes, Wendy Williams sat silently on the yellow school bus, wearing a cheap belt and rummage-sale slacks. One boy stopped and yanked his thumb, demanding her seat.