SCIENCE/ TECHNOLOGY : National Paging Again Announces A+ Beepers Merger

If anything, Southland Communications Inc. is persistent.

On Monday, the financially strapped paging service in Santa Ana, which is tangled in legal troubles with securities regulators, announced for the second time that it has signed an agreement to merge with A+ Beepers of California Inc. in Torrance.

Southland, which does business as National Paging, first broached the idea of a merger with A+ Beepers in October, 1989. Southland formally announced that it had signed a letter of intent to merge with the Torrance-based company again in March. But the company said the deal did not close for lack of financing and regulatory difficulties.

“This time, it looks like it’s a combination,” said Seymour Cohen, general manager of A+ Beepers, a paging service with 24,000 clients. “I think everything can be worked out.”

In May, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Southland’s president, Ahmad N. Bayaa, and five other defendants in federal court in New York for allegedly conspiring to manipulate Southland’s stock price, which soared 83% in value in late March and early April.

Southland’s offices were also searched in connection with a criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office, and the company has been sued by creditors and removed from trading on the NASDAQ exchange. In its last quarterly statement filed in September, the company said its cash flow for the quarter ended July 31, 1990, was in “extremely critical condition.”

Southland officials did not return calls for comment.