Dole seeks advice

        Dole Food Co. said Wednesday it hired Boston Consulting Group to help it review its banana and fresh-cut flowers businesses and increase profits.

        In April, Dole said first-quarter net income dropped 4.7 percent and warned that a recent preliminary trade agreement between the United States and the European Union could rein in growth of its banana business in Europe.
       

Mechanics OK contract

        Mechanics and cleaners at Northwest Airlines easily approved a contract proposal reached after more than four years of negotiations and a near-walkout against the nation's fourth-biggest airline.

        The contract would make Northwest's mechanics the industry's highest-paid, raising their pay by an average of 24.4 percent over four years. The pay of cleaners and custodians would rise an average of 13 percent.

        Some 82.1 percent of union members voted to approve the contract via mail ballots, it was announced Wednesday.
       

J&J wants Inverness

        Johnson & Johnson is in talks to buy most of Inverness Medical Technology Inc. for about $1.3 billion in stock.

        The drug- and medical-device maker, which already sells Inverness' glucose-monitoring systems, would pay $35 a share for the diabetes business, a 20 percent premium to the average price of Inverness shares the past 20 days.

        Johnson & Johnson's share of the $3.6 billion market for hand- ‘held devices to check blood sugar dropped as low as 28 percent from about 50 percent five years ago as demand shifted to faster, easier-to-use tests.
       

Windows XP due in Oct.

        Windows XP, Microsoft Corp.'s new version of its personal computer operating system, will be released Oct. 25, in time for the holiday season but too late for the back-to-school crowd.

        The company has not said what it will charge. Previous versions have retailed for around $90.

        Microsoft will release a consumer-oriented Windows XP Home Edition and a business-oriented Windows XP Professional Edition.

        The system features a cleaner desktop design and allows several users to keep files on one computer private from each other.
       

Stocks win in long haul

        An investor would have made 440 times more in U.K. stocks than government bonds by investing 100 pounds in 1869, a study by Credit Suisse First Boston said.

        An investor would have earned 440,117 pounds ($625,324) by the end of 2000 in U.K. stock funds during the last 130 years, compared with less than 1,000 pounds in bonds, after adjusting for inflation, CSFB found.

        Credit Suisse chose 1869 as the start date because better data were available than in earlier years, said Robert Barrie, the company's chief UK economist.

        In the last 10 years, bonds have returned almost 10 percent, adjusting for inflation. The equity risk premium is currently 3.5 percent to 4 percent.

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