News briefs

Lockheed Martin will sell its midrange computer distributor Access Graphics to General Electric in a $2.8 billion stock swap. Lockheed Martin will offload Access Graphics, the Aerostructures division and its stake in GlobalStar for 29 million of Lockheed stock.

Access Graphics former president John Ramsey will work as a consultant for Lockheed Martin's Commercial Systems Group.

Kevin Mannion, Novell sales director, has decided to join Netscape as sales director for the UK and Ireland. He will be responsible for Novonyx, a joint initiative between both companies which will be developing the Netscape Suitespot Server on an Intranetware platform.

Toshiba has come clean over making illegal payoffs to a racketeer. It joins other companies also involved in legal wranglings, including three former Nikko Securities officials who have been arrested on suspicion of making similar payoffs.

Olivetti CEO Roberto Colaninno has come under fire from trade unions over plans to cut 1,650 jobs across the troubled IT firm's subsidiaries.

Over 900 of the job cuts will come from Olsy, which is involved in merger talks with Wang Laboratories. Another 300 jobs will be cut at its office equipment company Lexicon.

ICL has rolled out a team of retired computer programmers to combat the shortage of IT staff qualified to deal with the Year 2000 problem. The 300 pensioners will be given their own PCs, programmed in old-style computer languages.