Merrill Lynch Picks 17 Companies To Shine In ‘98

Merrill Lynch & Co. analysts’ global stock picks for 1998 are dominated by U.S. companies.

Of the 17 stocks on the firm’s 1998 “global focus list,” 14 are domestic, only three foreign.

The stocks, which analysts from the largest U.S. brokerage discussed on a conference call earlier this week, are:

Bank of New York Co.; insurers Chubb Corp. and Protective Life Corp.; cable television company Comcast Corp.; restaurant operator Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc.; Delta Air Lines Inc., natural gas distributor Questar Corp.; and hospital operator Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Also, information processor DST Systems Inc.; mortgage financier Fannie Mae; medical-device maker Guidant Corp.; home-improvement products maker Masco Corp.; business-supplies retailer Office Depot Inc.; and drugmaker Pfizer Inc.

The foreign firms are Netherlands-based carrier KLM Royal Dutch Air Lines NV; Italian phone company Telecom Italia SpA; and Japan’s Toyota Motor Co.

Lottery clubs busted

Police raided more than 40 telemarketing “boiler rooms” and arrested four people for allegedly selling shares in fake lottery clubs that targeted the elderly.

The $1 million-a-week telephone scams were fairly sophisticated, with some Internet Web sites and the pretense of customer-service departments, said Wilfredo Fernandez, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.

“When they call you, they say: ‘Would you like to share in a lottery pool? If we win, you’ll get a share of whatever the jackpot is,”’ Fernandez said Wednesday. “But, of course, as with all fraud schemes, there’s no jackpot. They pocketed the money and then just kept on getting more and more people.”

The arrests followed a yearlong investigation into the lottery clubs.

It’s a federal crime to sell shares in lottery tickets.

All four men were arrested on a charge of importing or transporting lottery tickets, a felony carrying a possible two-year prison term and $250,000 fine.