Yoichi Morishita

In Hollywood, deals are often made and broken based solely on trust. Sunday's sale of MCA Inc. by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. stemmed from an intense distrust that had brewed for more than two years between the Japanese owners and American managers. Seagram Co.'s ability to move fast, tie up Matsushita in exclusive negotiations and gain control of MCA reflects the extraordinary trust that developed in just a few weeks between Seagram Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr.

In Hollywood, deals are often made and broken based solely on trust. Sunday's sale of MCA Inc. by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. stemmed from an intense distrust that had brewed for more than two years between the Japanese owners and American managers. Seagram Co.'s ability to move fast, tie up Matsushita in exclusive negotiations and gain control of MCA reflects the extraordinary trust that developed in just a few weeks between Seagram Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr.

MCA Chairman Lew R. Wasserman and President Sidney J. Sheinberg met Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco with senior executives from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., but failed to reach accord on the degree of control sought by the entertainment subsidiary. "The issues were discussed but nothing was resolved," Sheinberg said Tuesday night from his hotel. Despite the executives' effort to meet privately, Japanese news reporters were spotted outside the hotel.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said Tuesday that it will use the $5.7 billion it receives from the sale of most of MCA Inc. to fund a string of new investments. President Yoichi Morishita said proceeds from the sale of the Hollywood film company to Seagram Co. will help it invest more aggressively in other multimedia projects. Matsushita is not abandoning the sector, he said, as some analysts had speculated it would.

The president of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which owns Los Angeles-based entertainment giant MCA Inc., resigned Tuesday in the face of an embarrassing loan scandal and a lingering sales slump. In a characteristically Japanese gesture, Akio Tanii publicly accepted responsibility for the company's problems and said he was moving aside to make way for new management at the Osaka-based manufacturing giant. Tanii was immediately replaced by Yoichi Morishita, an executive vice president.

The management training seminar at Ajinomoto Co. was nothing out of the ordinary until the participants were directed to a tiny house on the food company's campus here. There they took turns sitting on a tatami mat as a tea master, dressed in a red kimono, served them green tea. It wasn't break time. It was a crucial part of the program: to teach foreign managers about Japanese ways and to groom non-Japanese for senior management.

Saying he is buying "one of only six major seats at the table," beverage heir Edgar Bronfman Jr. ended his quest to acquire a Hollywood studio Sunday by agreeing to spend $5.704 billion for a controlling interest in entertainment conglomerate MCA Inc. The negotiations between Bronfman, 39, and Japanese electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial, which started March 6 in Osaka, ended at 3:30 p.m.

Seagram Co. continued on Friday to move quickly toward buying control of MCA Inc. amid growing confusion over whether the widely reported $7-billion price tag for 80% of the company was overstated by as much as $1.4 billion. Sources close to the deal, expected to be announced as early as Sunday, said that the reported price leaked Thursday was too high, and that Seagram would actually be paying only about $5.6 billion, although the price was said to be still under discussion.

There were ways in which the first week of April was like any other on the 15th floor of 100 Universal City Plaza, the black glass tower on Lankershim Boulevardthat serves as headquarters of MCA Inc. Lew Wasserman, the 82-year-old patriarchwhoUs led MCA for the past half-century--first as president, then as chairman--drove in every morning from Beverly Hills after receiving his pre-dawn briefing via phone and e-mail from company executives around the world. Thomas P.