Coniston Partners Dismantles Investment Fund : Securities: The firm was a leading corporate raider, but times have changed. The company, however, lives on.

Coniston Partners, one of the most visible and successful corporate raiders of the 1980s, said Friday that it would dismantle its $800-million investment fund.

The three Coniston partners--Keith Gollust, Paul Tierney and Augustus Oliver--plan to maintain investments in TW Services Inc. and UAL Corp. and distribute remaining cash to investors over the next few weeks, Tierney said.

“What we’ll be doing is liquidating the cash position,” Tierney said in an interview.

Coniston sees TW Services, the largest franchisee of Hardee’s restaurants, as a long-term investment, Tierney said. In addition, Coniston will concentrate on its risk arbitrage partnership, an arm for distressed situations and bankruptcies and a capital investment unit that could syndicate on a deal-by-deal basis.

Coniston, formed in 1982, taunted major corporations by buying stakes of up to 20% and demanding asset sales and other actions.

It frequently sold its position later at a tidy profit, such as when it made about $170 million by buying shares of Allegis Corp., now UAL, and forcing the company to sell its hotel and car rental businesses. By using such strategies, Coniston was able to generate annual returns of more than 40%.

With the recent collapse of the junk- bond market, much of the financing that powered the takeover frenzy of the 1980s has dried up. Banks, faced with problems in their real estate portfolios, also have become less willing to lend money to fund highly leveraged transactions.

Companies now have “a great deal more difficulty in financing the purchase of a company on a friendly or unfriendly basis,” Tierney said.

“There are also fewer opportunities,” he said. “Prices of companies have not come down” in the past 18 months.

He said Coniston would now seek investments that were “longer term in nature.”

Coniston eventually plans to sell its 11.8% stake in UAL by tendering its shares in the proposed $4.4-billion employee-led buyout of the airline company.

Coniston liquidated a stake in UAL last fall, before a proposed $6.8-billion buyout by pilots and management collapsed Oct. 13. It amassed its present stake by paying about $160 a share, above current levels but below the buyout group’s latest offer, valued at $201 a share.

Tierney said he expects that the sale of UAL shares could be completed by year-end if the union-led bid musters financing. But arbitragers said Tierney’s remarks Friday could make it more difficult for the unions to meet an Aug. 9 financing deadline.

UAL shares fell $1.125 to $155.375 on the New York Stock Exchange Friday.

One of the most notable of Coniston’s raiding efforts was its long-running effort to force a sale of Gillette Co. The partnership nearly won a proxy battle to gain four seats on Gillette’s board, but then abandoned the fight in 1988 after the personal-care products company agreed to a costly stock buyback.

Tierney predicted that Coniston may achieve high rates of return for some units, but perhaps not the 40% achieved in the 1980s.