Also. . .

* Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products of Belgium agreed to buy Dictaphone Corp., maker of hand-held recorders, for about $511 million in stock to gain a well-known brand and a broad U.S. customer base. The company also would assume about $425 million in debt. Dictaphone makes recorders used by 400,000 U.S. doctors and 60% of U.S. hospitals for patient records and had been considering an initial public offering. Lernout & Hauspie aims to sell shares in a unit combining Dictaphone’s health-care products with its own medical software and services, the company said. Lernout & Hauspie owns technology that identifies the speaker and the topic of recordings, allowing them to be indexed and searched in a database. Stratford, Conn.-based Dictaphone, controlled by Stonington Partners, a New York private investment fund, had revenue of about $350 million in fiscal 1999. Lernout & Hauspie had revenue last year of $344 million. Lernout has its U.S. headquarters in Burlington, Mass.