Next Inc

Texas billionaire Ross Perot, complying with a federal law that requires all presidential candidates to disclose their financial assets, Tuesday demonstrated that without a doubt, he is by far the richest man ever to seek the White House. Perot, whose total assets are believed to exceed $3 billion, reported that he and his wife have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a wide variety of corporations, real estate, venture-capital funds and municipalities across the United States.

Apple Computer and International Business Machines may be discussing a technology swap or other business deal to bolster their respective operations amid increasing competition, analysts said Friday. However, spokesmen for both firms declined to confirm or deny a published report that a deal involving IBM's workstation microprocessor and Apple's operating system software is under discussion.

Motorola Inc. said it will license the Be Inc. operating system and put it on Motorola's line of personal computers that also run the Macintosh system from Apple Computer Inc. The announcement comes nearly two months after Apple ditched plans to buy or license the Be system, which was developed by former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee. Apple instead bought Next Software Inc. for $430 million. Other makers of Apple-compatible computers, including International Business Machines Corp.

Next Computer Inc. said Wednesday that it has hired a British executive to serve as president and chief operating officer of the company, which was founded by personal computer pioneer Steve Jobs. The executive, Peter van Cuylenburg, was a group director of Cable & Wireless, a British phone company. Van Cuylenburg and Jobs will share a newly created office of the president at Next.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer, has been wandering in the technology wilderness since he was forced out of Apple a decade ago, struggling to make his second computer company, Next Inc., a success. But he burst onto the public stage this year with his third company, Pixar, the computer animation pioneer that created Disney's "Toy Story." Pixar rode the success of "Toy Story" with an initial public offering that made Jobs, who owns 80% of the company, an overnight billionaire, though the stock has since declined somewhat.

Lucasfilm Ltd. has sold its computer graphics division to Steven P. Jobs, co-founder and former chairman of Apple Computer, and the division's employees, a spokeswoman for Jobs said Friday. Jobs paid an undisclosed sum "in the several millions" for a majority interest in Pixar, which will become an independent company. The San Rafael-based company's 43 employees own the remainder. Jobs will serve as chairman of Pixar.

Bankrupt credit card lender NextCard Inc. has abandoned plans to reorganize and is planning to liquidate, according to court documents. The San Francisco-based company filed liquidation plans Monday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., under which it would pay $2.5 million to $17 million to creditors, far short of the $464 million in claims filed against the company. Under terms of the plan, payouts are set to be funded by NextCard's cash holdings of $4.