BIZ WATCH

By BERNARD BAUMOHL, VALERIE MARCHANT, JOSHUA COOPER RAMO AND BILL SAPORITO

NOVELL HIRES A GEEK GODZILLA

Novell is a company that has been repeatedly torpedoed and nearly sunk by Microsoft. The Utah-based firm (1996 sales: $1.3 billion) owned the market for local- area-network software in the early 1990s, but has been losing share to Microsoft's Windows NT. Though Novell has tried to refocus, its stock recently traded at a near all-time low. Investors are doubting its chances of beating Big Geek (as Microsoft has become known).

But now Novell has a big geek of its own. Sun Microsystems' house genius, Eric Schmidt, 41, is going to head up the struggling company. Schmidt is credited with helping build Sun (1996 sales: $7 billion) into a hardware behemoth. Soft-spoken and given to windy though usually hysterical jokes, he has a long trail of success: millions in the bank, oodles of patents, the respect of the industry. Why jump to Novell? Friends say there's only one other thing he wants: Bill Gates' scalp.

WHEN BOOMERS BECOME BUSTED

Here's a sign the economy may be in real trouble: the baby boomers, legendary for their spending and borrowing, are slipping into debt hell. And at least one major credit-card company is starting to feel the heat. Advanta, the nation's ninth largest issuer of plastic, stunned Wall Street last week by forecasting a loss of $20 million in the first quarter. The company relies on a computer model to pick more affluent customers, who are offered a large credit line and teaser rates as low as 5.9%. The result: the number of cardholders jumped from 2 million to 6 million in five years.

The downside of the strategy may be that big-spending boomers fall harder. Overall, credit-card delinquencies soared to a record last quarter, with 3.72% of borrowers falling behind in payments. Many are seeking relief in bankruptcy. Such tactics have pelted the stocks of most credit-card issuers. Advanta execs are talking to outside advisers about the possibility of selling the company.

Stock price Percent Feb.13 March 21 change

Advanta Corp. 53 1/4 28 1/8 -47% MBNA 36 5/8 30 7/8 -16% Household International 105 5/8 93 7/8 -11% Capital One Financial 42 1/4 38 5/8 -9% First USA 50 3/8 48 -5%

MORE BAD NEWS FOR DOW JONES

The news has been anything but good this year for Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal, among other media properties. First, a small but determined group of stockholders, including some of the family that controls the company's voting shares, raised a ruckus about its weak performance, particularly at its Telerate unit. Then last week the company's star attraction, the Journal, got whacked with a $223 million libel judgment, the largest ever, courtesy of a Houston jury. The panel found the paper and one of its reporters, Laura Jereski, had libeled the investment firm MMAR Group Inc. The company went out of business shortly after the paper published an article that in part described an alleged skirmish between MMAR and a big client.

"If it's affirmed, it would totally change the journalistic and legal landscape," First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told the Journal. Dow Jones has $45 million in libel coverage for this case. Because libel law puts a heavy burden of proof on the accuser, most awards are reduced or thrown out on appeal, and the Journal is hoping that pattern holds. "We were chronicling the difficulties of this company; we did not cause them," managing editor Paul Steiger said in a statement.