News In Brief

US energy giant Enron Corp. said it had agreed to sell its wholly owned Oregon utility, Portland General Electric, to Sierra Pacific Resources for $2.1 billion. The new combined company will have more than $9 billion in assets and 1.7 million customers in Oregon, California, and Nevada. Reno, Nev.-based Sierra Pacific Resources also has natural gas and pipeline divisions.

Share prices in Microsoft took a steep tumble in trading on Europe's Instinet system on the first business day after last week's antitrust decision against the software giant. From Friday's close of $91-9/16, prices slid as low as $82 before stabilizing at $82-7/8. Across Asia, sluggish trading also was blamed on worry about the effects of the Micro-soft ruling, but only in Manila and Sydney, Australia, were stock indexes off by more than 0.7 percent. Analysts said traders would keep careful watch on Microsoft's closing price Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, where the stock was down more than 6 percent in early trading.

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