June 15, 2001

Japanese luxury brands are still growing briskly, 15 years after first cars arrived from Acura; photos; graphs comparing sales with those of comparable European cars (M)

John Tierney The Big City column contends that since AIDS never became crisis in heterosexual community that was predicted, it should not receive more than its share of resources (M)

Metalclad Corp says Mexican government has agreed to pay $15.6 million as compensation for lost profits in out-of-court settlement after Canadian court rules in favor of company; Supreme Court of British Columbia last month upheld ruling by North American Free Trade Agreement panel that Mexico violated law protecting foreign investors by blocking Metalclad from construcing waste dump in northern Mexico (S)

Swissair, trying to stablize its serious financial conditions, may see its troubles worsen drastically by threatened bankruptcy filing by French airlines AOM and Air Liberte in which Swissair has major stake but not management control; such filing would most likely leave Swissair saddled with responsibility for severance pay and other shutdown costs; analysts' estimates of total cost run up to $560 million; Swissair declines to give or confirm specific figure; graph (M)

General Electric Co's planned acquisition of Honeywell International appears near collapse after GE says that its final concessions will probably not satisfy European regulators; GE chairman-chief executive John F Welch Jr says European regulators' demands exceed anything he or European advisers imagined, and differ sharply from antitrust counterparts in US and Canada; events lead to internal meetings at United Technologies about possibility of making bid for Honeywell; proposed Honeywell acquisition would be first big American deal to be blocked soley by European regulators; Europeans worry that combined company could control too much of market for aviation products and could direct far too much business to itself (M)