Heads I Win, Tails You Lose - Los Angeles Times

From the Put-On-a-Happy-Face File: Farmers Group and Batus Inc., which are locked in a hostile takeover battle, both claimed to have come out on top in court on Friday. Not only was it the

same court, it was the same ruling. At issue was the decision of a Nevada federal judge concerning a resolution Batus wants to put before a shareholders meeting May 20. It calls on Farmers

to immediately begin merger negotiations. Los Angeles-based Farmers Group said the judge agreed with its lawyers in saying that such a resolution could not be binding. For its part, Batus

claimed victory because the judge required Farmers to introduce the resolution, which Farmers had been resisting. Could this be what corporate jargoneers love to call a “win-win” situation?

Mouse, Indeed, Will Sprout Indeed, there seems to be no limit to Walt Disney’s promotion of Mickey Mouse’s upcoming 60th birthday. Apparently, the seeds have been planted for the profile of

Mickey Mouse to be cut from a large field crop in the Midwest so that Mickey can be seen by air travelers crisscrossing the country. Last week, Footnotes reported remarks by Disney Chairman

Michael Eisner that we thought indicated that Disney would restrain itself. Wrong. We didn’t mean to slip you a mickey. Product of a Fertile Mind There’s a new breed of rabbit in town. It’s

called the Rabbit Computer, a $159 device that helps a would-be mom predict the best time to get pregnant. By recording a woman’s daily morning temperature in its memory banks, the Rabbit

Computer can predict when a woman is most likely to conceive, its creators boast. That is because a woman’s body temperature rises slightly when she ovulates. The device is being sold

through mail order by RCC Marketing of Los Angeles. Jerry Newman, one of RCC’s three founders, says Rabbit Computer works best for woman with regular menstrual cycles. And, he cautions, it’s

not a good contraception device. Although the device looks more like a calculator than a bunny, Newman believes that rabbit is a good name. “We wanted something that didn’t sound scientific

and had to do with fertility.” That’s What Friends Are For Is turnabout fair play? In late 1986, AFG Industries and a partner tried to buy Lear Siegler for the expressed purpose of getting

its auto glass business. Lear resisted AFG and turned, instead, to Forstmann Little, the leveraged buyout specialists. Then this month Forstmann went after AFG, hoping to merge Lear

Siegler’s Safelite auto glass sales operations with AFG’s half-billion-dollar residential glassmaking system. But Thursday, Forstmann pulled out. People who work in glass houses shouldn’t

throw stones. MORE TO READ