Also. . .

In a strong signal of its intention to expand at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and compete aggressively with US Airways’ planned discount operation, Southwest Airlines said it is establishing a crew base with 200 pilots at the airport. The base will become the sixth for the Dallas-based airline, whose other crew bases are in Oakland, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix and Chicago, cities with 100 to 170 Southwest flights a day.

* A unit of Loral Space & Communications Ltd. said it has halted work on three satellites for Asian buyers and will cut as many as 300 jobs, or 9% of its work force. Space Systems/Loral said it would try to find other buyers for the satellites if P.T. Pasifik Satelit Nusantara of Jakarta, Indonesia, and Asia Broadcasting & Communications Network Public Co. of Bangkok, Thailand, couldn’t resume their orders.

* Salomon Smith Barney Inc. said Vice Chairman Shigeru Myojin, head of the firm’s bond arbitrage group and one of Wall Street’s highest-paid executives, will retire in June. Myojin, who joined Salomon in 1979, will be succeeded by Robert Stavis. Myojin made $31.45 million in salary, bonus and deferred payments in 1996.

* Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. will sell its Value Health Inc. behavioral unit to FHC Health Systems for $230 million, completing the first of several divestitures planned by its new management team.

* A U.S. subsidiary of London-based Reuters Holdings, a news and financial information provider, is being investigated for allegedly stealing information from rival Bloomberg. Reuters said Reuters Analytics Inc., based in Stamford, Conn., was the subject of a New York grand jury probe into charges that it improperly gained access and used information from Bloomberg’s computers.