OTHER NEWS - Oct. 12, 1996

B of A Plans IPO for Card Processing Unit: BankAmerica Corp. plans to sell shares of its credit card processing business in an initial stock offering. The sale of BA Merchant Processing Service Inc. by the San Francisco bank would raise cash to expand into new markets for processing credit and debit card purchases. BA Merchant Processing is the nation’s fourth-largest processor of credit card transactions, generating $20.7 million in profit and $110 million in revenue in 1995, the bank said in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The unit, which was formed recently as a separate subsidiary of the bank, accounted for less than 1% of BankAmerica’s $2.7 billion in earnings last year. BankAmerica plans to keep a controlling stake of the shares in the company after the sale.