Business Notes

BANKING Record Red Ink at Bank America

The troubles of financial giant BankAmerica were hardly a secret. A red tide of loan losses has swelled over the past four years, and Chairman Samuel Armacost last month forecast little or no profit for the second quarter. Still, the financial community was stunned when BankAmerica last week announced a net loss of $338 million for that period. It was the second-worst quarterly deficit in U.S. banking history (after Continental Illinois' $1.1 billion loss in the second quarter of 1984).

As recently as 1979, California's BankAmerica was the world's largest and most profitable financial company, but it has since slipped behind New York's Citicorp, mainly as a result of losses from loans not repaid by developing countries and by such troubled industries as agriculture, real estate and shipping.

BankAmerica's huge losses make other financial institutions nervous, in part because of the company's size. Several major banks are worried about their own shaky loans and about what may be a tough new attitude among federal bank regulators. While BankAmerica wrote off $382 million in bad loans in the second quarter, more of its troubles resulted from regulatory pressure to increase its loan-loss reserve by $527 million. UNIONS Mama Knows Best

The 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers union trusts that the American public will listen to Mama. In an effort to communicate with the public about issues that affect labor, the organization has hired Actress Vicki Lawrence. She will portray the irascible, aggressively cracker-brained character Mama, whom she played first on the Carol Burnett Show and later on her own sitcom Mama's Family, in a series of light but straight-talking television commercials on themes such as union organizing, foreign takeovers and brand boycotts. Lawrence, a Reagan Republican, signed a one-year, $150,000 contract with the anti-Reagan union. "This is not Democratic or Republican," says Lawrence. "It's American."

U.F.C.W. President William Wynn says that the ads mark the first time that a union has used a television character to help sell its views. Frustrated by his organization's inability to reach the public, Wynn thought that the humorous character of Mama would attract the right audience and be able to simplify complex issues. "We're going to go where the public is," says Wynn, "and that's in front of the television set. Every one can relate to Mama." MERGERS Two Healthy Get-Togethers

The health-care industry is bubbling with billion-dollar mergers. American Hospital Supply, the nation's largest distributor of hospital supplies, agreed last week to merge with Baxter Travenol Laboratories, the third-biggest hospital-supply company, in a deal valued at $3.8 billion. Monsanto has also agreed to acquire G.D. Searle for $2.7 billion, giving the chemical giant a long-desired place in the Pharmaceuticals market.

The Baxter merger put an end to American Hospital's four-month-old plan to combine with the Hospital Corp. of America, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. Baxter Travenol's $51-a-share offer, $15 more than HCA's previous bid, was grudgingly accepted by the American Hospital board only after irate stockholders, led by Financier Carl Icahn, threatened to throw out the board of directors.

In buying Searle, which produces prescription drugs as well as NutraSweet, a brand name for aspartame, Monsanto is acquiring a drug-distribution network, sales force and research-and-development operation. Part of Searle's appeal is its expertise in biotechnology, a field Monsanto has already begun to explore. TECHNOLOGY Encyclopedia on a Disk

In the beginning, there was the book. Now there is the compact disk. Grolier, a Connecticut-based publisher of encyclopedias and other educational materials, last week announced it would begin marketing a compact-disk version of its Academic American Encyclopedia in October. The CD encyclopedia, printed on a shiny platter 4.72 in. in diameter, will contain all the information in Grolier's 21-volume, 9 million-word printed encyclopedia.

The disk encyclopedia (suggested retail price: $199) works on personal computers like the IBM PC once they are equipped with a special compact-disk drive. This spins the CD platter and translates the digital information into words with a laser beam. The first such hookups, due out this fall, will cost about $2,000. They are manufactured by Hitachi, Sony and other companies.

The possibilities of storing vast amounts of information on disks are almost limitless. A single disk could hold the contents of 540 copies of the King James Bible. Grolier's next project: a disk that will hold an unabridged dictionary and a thesaurus. FASHION Cutting It Too Close

All fashion is imitative, but apparently Yves Saint Laurent, the doyen of French couturiers, took that principle a little too far. In a decision that caused a furor in the world of high fashion, a Paris civil court recently ruled that Saint Laurent had in effect plagiarized an outfit created by a rival designer, and fined the master some $11,000. The case represents the first time in anyone's memory that one member of the French Couturier Federation has sued another.

In 1979 a designer named Benoit Bartherotte saw a Saint Laurent model sashaying down the runway in a design called Toreador. It was, thought Bartherotte, an exact copy of an outfit that he had created for his own company, Jacques Esterel. Bartherotte sued in criminal court, but the charges were dismissed two years ago.

Bartherotte's action made him an outcast in fashion circles. Fashion editors no longer frequent his shows. For him, the verdict was a moral victory. Saint Laurent is appealing the decision, but the designer, who was recently awarded the prestigious Legion d'Honneur, seems unruffled by the episode.