LOS ANGELES COUNTY - News from Feb. 23, 1988

Herald L. Ritch has become the fourth partner in Riordan Freeman & Spogli, a Los Angeles-based merchant banking firm specializing in management buyouts. Ritch will head the firm’s New York office, which will open soon. Ritch, 37, previously was a managing director of Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York and a senior member of the firm’s mergers and acquisitions department. Ritch will be joined in the New York office by two former Kidder Peabody vice presidents--John M. Roth, 30, and William H. Sherer, 34.