P.M. BRIEFING : Mitsubishi Bids for Aristech but Promises No Big Changes

Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp., which is offering to buy America’s Aristech Chemical Corp. in a bid with the polymers and chemical company’s management, said today it would make no major changes at Aristech if its bid is successful.

The announcement was evidently intended to help quell growing anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States about Japan’s buying of America.

The Japanese trading company and Aristech’s chairman, Thomas Marshall, emerged Tuesday as white knights for the Pittsburgh-based polymers and chemicals company with an $845-million, or $26-a-share, bid.

A successful deal would be the largest leveraged buyout by a Japanese firm of a U.S. company and only the second white knight operation by a Japanese firm in the United States.

No Japanese firm now has operations in the American petrochemicals industry and Mitsubishi wants a U.S. foothold with Aristech, Makoto Okabe, assistant manager in Mitsubishi’s corporate strategy and planning department, said today.