Safeway

The Commerce Department yesterday fined Safeway Stores Inc. $995,000 to settle charges that the grocery chain violated the Export Administration Act. Undersecretary of Commerce Paul Freedenberg said the penalty was the largest civil fine in the department's 10-year enforcement of anti-boycott laws. In July 1987, the department charged Safeway with multiple violations in connection with its operation of markets in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The government accused Safeway, among other things, of refusing to do business with U.S. suppliers.

At the bottom of the New York Times (Aug. 19, page D4), was a three- paragraph item that tells you more about the values of our times than most of the stuff printed on page one. It said that Safeway had laid off one- quarter of its headquarters staff. For 300 people, the other shoe had dropped. The first shoe hit with a celebrated thud - a sure 10 on the Richter scale for greed. Safeway, the nation's largest supermarket chain, announced it was taking itself private - cannibalizing itself for the profit of its officers, shareholders, bankers, lawyers, lenders.

A $60-a-share tender offer for two-thirds of Strawbridge & Clothier's common stock expired today at 12:01 a.m. Berry Acquisition Co., the company created by investor Ronald S. Baron to initiate a takeover of the Philadelphia company, announced yesterday that it would not extend its offer or buy any of the 1.2 million shares that had been tendered. Baron said he would continue to "pursue vigorously all available avenues" for realizing the full value of all shareholders' investments in the company, including "seeking to interest others in acquiring the company.

Safeway Stores Inc. said yesterday that it planned to remain independent despite Dart Group Corp.'s disclosure that it might attempt to acquire the giant supermarket chain. Dart Group, a Landover, Md.-based operator of book-retailing and automotive parts businesses, made the disclosure Thursday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also said a partnership it controls had acquired 5.9 percent of Safeway's 61 million common shares outstanding. Safeway chairman Peter A. Magowan yesterday issued a terse statement from the company's Oakland, Calif.