Firms

Two architectural firms were hired last night by the Marple Newtown school board to oversee the renovation of all school district buildings by August 2002. David Lynch & Associates of Lancaster and Karlsberger Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, were selected to work as a team, following an interviewing process that lasted about two hours. Both firms are expected to sign contracts this week and start work immediately on a project timeline, said Superintendent Raj K. Chopra. "We will be asking them to visit the schools and devise a plan based on what they think we can accomplish," said Chopra.

A typical day for WolfBlock law firm chairman Mark Alderman might include a meeting with a public relations consultant, a stop at a reception, a phone call from a client, and a strategy session with the firm's public finance group. He might lead a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he is on the faculty, travel to one of the firm's eight offices outside of Philadelphia, or huddle with a partner from another firm he's trying to recruit to WolfBlock. He would practice little if any law. "It's all about making money," Alderman says about the operations of law firms like WolfBlock, Schorr & Solis-Cohen L.L.P.

The number of American companies abandoning operations in the white-ruled country of South Africa continues to grow. General Motors is only the latest American concern to pull out. The giant automaker announced yesterday that it would sell its wholly owned subsidiary in South Africa, which employs about 3,000 people. GM, which is the second-largest U.S. employer in South Africa, behind Mobil Oil, joins 28 American firms that have left or have disclosed plans to do so this year, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center.

Put the words global and economy together and images of potent multinational corporations, gobbling up markets and competing across continents, spring to mind. But across the North Atlantic, a group of economic development specialists have been marching to a very different drummer - the idea of developing networks of small manufacturers that can learn to compete globally by collaborating locally. These strategists for small manufacturing networks are to be found in Denmark, Germany, Italy and across the United States from North Carolina to Washington state.

Last month, when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission approved an $807 million bond issue, it planted a seed designed to produce a massive highway widening and expansion project in the coming years. But in the months ahead, that seed is likely to produce some early fruit, which will be especially sweet for a handful of politically connected law firms and investment houses. Five firms with close ties to the Thornburgh administration or high-placed Democrats will receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, thanks to their participation in the bond sales.

The trade figures released yesterday by the U.S. Commerce Department provide fresh evidence that American manufacturers may be finally reaping the long-overdue benefits of a weakened dollar. Exports of manufactured goods, while down slightly in December, soared to $171.5 billion at the end of 1987 compared with $148.7 billion in 1986, the department reported. But while the trade figures were good news to Wall Street, they no doubt added impetus to what has become an unusual problem among U.S. companies.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has awarded a $10.7 million contract to a consortium of three public relations firms to help explain the sweeping new immigration law to employers and immigrants. Fernando Oaxaca, president of Coronado Communications Corp. of Los Angeles, will head the consortium, which is called "The Justice Group. " The other two firms involved are Hill & Knowlton Inc., a huge public relations firm headquartered in New York, and La Angencia d Orci of Los Angeles.

At first glance, it would appear that the area's architectural- and engineering-services firms should be draping their drawing boards in black. Construction of steel mills, utility power plants and oil refineries has been at a standstill for years. And in the meantime, a promising boomlet earlier this year in other forms of construction now shows signs of sagging under the recent tax reform. Commerce Department figures reveal that both residential and commercial construction dipped from July to August.

Operators of two firms that sell steaks, cheese and other food products allegedly conspired to evade taxes by paying themselves more than $1 million "under the table," authorities say. The alleged scheme involving Quality Foods Co. of Camden, one of the largest wholesale processed steak dealers on the East Coast, took place between May 1982 and September 1986, a federal grand jury in Philadelphia charged yesterday. The grand jury indicted M. Richard Cohen, 51, and his wife, Suzanne, 47, owners of Quality, and Stanley P. Polekoff, 58, and his wife, Leona, 57, operators of the defunct Sharonland Food Distributors Inc. Also indicted were Gary Jacobson, 46, of Medford, N.J., a former Sharonland official, and Sharonland's accountant, Joseph Goldenberg, 51, of Cherry Hill.

The Rev. Leon Sullivan, who first pushed U.S. businessmen to implement human rights reforms at their plants in South Africa, says the time has come for "corporate civil disobedience" by American firms in the racially torn nation. "No company is doing enough now," said the Philadelphia minister who nine years ago penned the widely publicized "Sullivan Principles" as an anti- apartheid primer for U.S. corporations in South Africa. Sullivan, holding a news conference yesterday on the 10th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, said he sent letters to 195 chief executive officers of U.S. firms urging them to ignore any South African government regulation that reinforces apartheid, the racial policy that denies many rights to the country's 24 million black residents.