April 20, 2001

Europe's leading software maker SAP A.G. reported a first-quarter net profit of 117 million euros ($104 million), more than double the year-earlier figure. Sales rose 29 percent, to 1.5 billion euros, while costs were up only 2 percent and operating profit, which excludes the cost of employee stock options, rose 82 percent, to 233 million euros. Petra Kappl (NYT)

THEY are the saddest of old athletes. They have no team. They cannot look at the standing to see how the New York Cosmos are doing because there are no Cosmos. ''It is like going back to your hometown and seeing your old house torn down,'' said Werner Roth, once the captain.

Mark Green arrived at the sunlit art gallery in Bedford-Stuyvesant just after all of the pieces had fallen into place. His mayoral campaign aides had successfully summoned television and newspaper reporters. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the New York senator who 35 years ago helped set up the complex in Brooklyn that houses the gallery, accompanied him.

In a high-tension showdown at its headquarters in the Swiss town of Winterthur, Sulzer A.G., the venerable Swiss technology company, beat back an attempt by René Braginsky and his investment company, Incentive Capital, to unseat its board and take control. Incentive Capital has made an unsolicited $878 million bid for the company, which makes precision machinery ranging from oil pumps to artificial hips. Until recently, high-profile corporate battles have been scarce in Switzerland, where shareholders rarely challenge management. But investor activism is beginning to take hold as shareholders like Mr. Braginsky and Martin Ebner try to pry value from some of the country's blue-chip corporations.

Moving to stem losses in its mobile phone division, Ericsson A.B. of Sweden said today that it was talking to the Sony Corporation about combining their handset operations. Ericsson and Sony declined to elaborate on a terse joint statement confirming the talks, released after Japanese television reported the negotiations. But people close to the discussions said the deal would probably involve combining the two companies' handset units in a joint venture based in Britain, where Ericsson's mobile phone division is now.