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Area's largest hospitals PAGE 25
WEEK OF MARCH 11 - 17, 1985 VOLUME 1 0 NO.6
Japan trip still on, but Young not going
Insurance • compames being closed
BY JOYCE DAVIS ADAMS
BY CHARLES CHILD
CRAIN'S DETROIT BUSINESS
CRAINS DETROIT BUSINESS
When the Michigan trade caravan pulls into Hiroshima, Japan, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young a strong member of previous trade missions to Japan and several Eur opean countries - will not be heading it up. Press Secretary Robert Berg said Mayor Young has decided not to go to Japan because the April 12 trip clashes with his schedule. The 25member delegation leaves the day of the mayor's budget message to the Detroit City Council. "The trip will be after he finishes presenting the budget, and that's one of the busiest times ... he just could not pick up and leave," said Berg. The trip was designed to woo auto suppliers to Mazda Motor Corp., which plans to build a $500 million automobile assembly plant in Flat Rock. Frank Smith, president of the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce, said he was very disappointed, and that the mayor will be missed because he is an "internationally known person with high visibility." Smith said the trip's date was set "around our ability to get access to the supplier group for Mazda."
Two insurance companies based in Southfield are laying off or transferring out of the state 160 employees. Nationwide Corp., based in Columbus, Ohio, is dismantling the offices of two subsidiaries, Michigan Life Insurance Co. and National Casualty Co., to save money, said the president _(Nationwide) of the two local com- wanted the cost panies. "Many of Nationwide's savings of holdings are small, and they wanted the cost sav- merging smaller ings of merging smaller blocks. It was blocks," said Sherrod Turner, president of both not a business Michigan Life and National Casualty. "It was climate not a business climate de- decision." cision." The two companies SHERROD TURNER, generated about $100 president, Michigan Life and million worth of premiums in 1984, he said. National Casualty Ranked by total assets in 1983, National Casualty was the ninth largest property and casualty insurance firm with headquarters in the state, while Michigan Life was the No. 10 Michigan-based life insurance firm. Turner said the releases or transfers, which started in January, will be completed by May 1. Only about six marketing jobs will remain out of the original work force of 160. Nationwide subsidiaries in three other cities are taking over the two local firms' business. An office in Columbus will handle the group insurance, St. Louis will take over the individual
See JAPAN, PAGE 26
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MICHAEL SAMOJEDEN
Cross and Trecker President Richard Lindgren says the Bloomfield Hills company could reap $50 million annually from an Indonesian licensing agreement being negotiated.
Cross and Trecker says Indonesian pact likely BY JANE WHITE CRAIN'S DETROIT BUSINESS
Cross and Trecker Corp. is negotiating licensing agreements with 11 Indonesian companies that could yield up to $50 million in annual sales for the Bloomfield Hills-based company. "We're in the process of preparing proposals," said company President Richard Lindgren, who returned from Indonesia last week. ''We hope to be producing machine tools in Indonesia before the end of the year." The mineral-rich group of Southeast Asian islands is undergoing a massive
economic effort that could spell trade opportunities locally, Lindgren said. "They're interested in broadening their capabilities in forestry, agriculture, and in a wide range of other sorts of business - as well as increasing the amount of the local content in the autos they manufacture," Lindgren said. Under the agreements, Cross and Trecker would grant licenses to Indonesian companies to make machine tools, and the companies in tum would pay Cross and Trecker a certain percentage of the sales. See PACT, PAGE 26
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See INSURANCE, PAGE 26
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Yamasaki-designed office park set BYMARYSOLOMONSMYKA CRAIN'S DETROIT BUSINESS
A new Minoru Yamasaki building is about to rise on the metropolitan Detroit horizon. The internationally r - - - - - - : - - - - - - - , acclaimed architect, who has been based in the Detroit area since 1949, is the total project architect for Brookfield Office Park in Farmington Hills, a new Etkin" Equities Inc. development. Yamasaki did interior, exterior and landscape design for the $40 million, 21.5-acre Yamasaki project, which will eventually include four or five buildings totaling 400,000 square feet of highest-qual-
ity office space. The site is the comer of Middlebelt Road and Northwestern Highway. Groundbreaking for the first building is set for early next month, with completion expected early next year. Construction of the second building is scheduled to start three months later. Other local Yamasaki designs include Temple Beth El in Birmingham and the ANR Building at One Woodward Ave. in downtown Detroit. Yamasaki & Associates also designed the World Trade Center in New York. The architectural firm of Minoru Yamasaki & Associates is located in Troy. The outsides of the Brookfield buildings will be of white precast stone outlining building-high bays of gold-tone windows, beveled on the perimeter toward intermittent stone panels. Each building will have one section two stories high and a larger portion of three stories. The first two floors measure 40,000 square feet each, and the third floor 20,000 square See OFFICE, PAGE 26
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Nearly 1,700 ANR employees in Michigan could be affected by the possible takeover of ANA. Related story, Page 3 ~