WEEK IN REVIEW

For Philly, options are the pits

The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the nation’s biggest options exchange, has offered to buy the options business of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, the nation’s smallest, for no money down and no pie in the sky. Chicago wasn’t talking price, but a board spokesman said it would be limited to the cost of moving to Chicago.

“I don’t see how anyone can go for this deal,” said Paul Liang, who owns seats on both exchanges. Philadelphia seatholders would be able to trade in the Chicago pit for five years, said Mr. Liang, and then have to start all over again to buy a Chicago seat.

The American Stock Exchange, the second-largest options floor with a 23% share to Chicago’s 55%, also wants to pick up the 8% of options traded in Philly. “We are still talking to them,” said Daniel Noonan, an Amex spokesman.

Either deal would leave the Philadelphia exchange with almost nothing to do.

MassDemutual?

OppenheimerFunds Inc. and David L. Babson & Co. may wind up on the block if Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. spins off part of its $150 billion fund unit. That’s one of the options under consideration by the Springfield insurer as it tries to figure out ways to raise capital. It’s going through a strategic review with its investment banker, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. Demutualization, a la John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., is another option.

Focus on Buffett

Baltimore’s Legg Mason Inc. has agreed to buy Focus Capital Advisory LP, a Philadelphia outfit that runs the $10.6 million Focus Trust Fund. It’s the fifth money manager Legg Mason has bought in two years, but the only one headed by the author of a book called “The Warren Buffett Way.”

The writer, Robert Hagstrom, 41, tries to invest the way Mr. Buffett does and in fact Focus Trust’s second-biggest holding is Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The trust is up 17.5% year to date, ahead of the 13.1% of Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. Mr. Hagstrom, of course, is included in the deal.

That’s gold, man

The 190 partners of Goldman Sachs Group LP could each be worth $76 million more if the firm goes public. That’s in addition to their seven-figure salaries. An IPO decision is “quickly coming to a head,” chief exec Jon Corzine told employees in a conference call, citing record first-half results. The partners’ annual meeting is Friday.

Price of freedom

BankBoston Corp. offered Sanford Robinson $10 million to stay as chairman of Robertson Stephens after the bank buys the company from BankAmerica Corp. No thanks, said he, and left to start his own firm.

Kielbasy are hot

Asea Brown Boveri — the Swiss-Swedish company is probably best known in this country for building the electric locomotives that power Amtrak trains in the Northeast Corridor — is a genuine worldwide conglomerate: 1,000 companies with 210,000 workers in 140 countries.

Its latest news comes out of Warsaw, where ABB Towarzystwo Funduszy Powiernczych SA, a subsidiary of its money management arm, is about to launch a mutual fund holding Polish stocks, treasury bills and bonds.

“Our strategy is to watch the WIG20,” said ABB et ceteraski spokesman Zenon Slomski, of the Warsaw Stock Exchange benchmark.

Ginza goings-on

Starting in July, the Asian subsidiary of Scudder Kemper Investments Inc. will sell unit trusts in Japan. By the end of the year it plans to offer four of its U.S. funds there. . .The Securities Dealers Association of Japan has awarded membership to Merrill Lynch & Co.

Bloomberg News contributed to his report.