Acsi

Two of the biggest short-term winners in the $12 billion-plus merger between WorldCom Inc. and MFS Communications Co. are Baltimore-area firms.The Baltimore venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates Inc. will see the value of its 5.7 million shares of MFS skyrocket if the all-stock deal, the value of which changes with fluctuations in WorldCom's share price, goes through at anything like the $55.39 a share the parties agreed to last weekend.That price would make New Enterprise's stake in the combined company worth $318 million, a remarkable return on the $3.9 million the firm invested only two years ago in Uunet Technologies Inc., a Virginia-based Internet service provider.

The cost of building its fiber-optic network resulted in a second-quarter loss of more than $25 million for American Communications Services Inc., despite record revenue, the company said yesterday.The Annapolis Junction-based telephone company reported revenue of $11.6 million, a 621 percent increase over the $1.6 million it reported for the same quarter last year.The company reported a net loss of $25.7 million, or 92 cents a share, compared with $8.76 million, or $1.49 per share, for the same quarter last year.

New positionsVerner named senior v.p. at Sunburst HospitalitySunburst Hospitality Corp. has appointed Douglas H. Verner to the positions of senior vice president, general counsel and secretary. A law graduate of the University of Oregon and a 14-year hotel industry veteran, he most recently was executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary for Chartwell Leisure Inc.Coleman to head ACSI corporate developmentAmerican Communications Services Inc., a provider of integrated communications, named Gregory I. Coleman director of corporate development for the Annapolis Junction firm.

ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION has played an important role in the regional economy ever since 1840, when the first railroad link to Maryland's state capital was launched from there. These days this community is in the news because it is in the midst of an office boom.The reasons are easy enough to understand. Location is everything in real estate and Annapolis Junction has the location. It is on the Anne Arundel-Howard County line, east of Route 1, south of Route 32 and northwest of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

The principal of Evangel Christian Academy criticized yesterday reports of racial tension at his private school as "totally false" and insisted that when he said "I don't have any trouble with the coloreds," he was referring not to African-Americans but to South African "coloreds," a label for mixed-race persons used by the former apartheid government. That quote, first reported in yesterday's Sun, caused a barrage of angry phone calls to the school, administrators said. It was also decried by Derek Keenan, the vice president for academic affairs of the Association of Christian Schools International, one of the largest Christian school organizations in the world.

New positionsSylvan Prometric names Kempton a vice presidentSylvan Prometric named Richard S. Kempton vice president, test center services. He will have responsibility for providing value-added services to Prometric Testing Centers and Sylvan Technology Centers worldwide. He will also direct teams specializing in channels served by Sylvan Prometric, including certification, professional licensure and academic testing. Before joining Sylvan, he was president of six New Horizons Computer Learning Center franchises.

New positionsHopkins names Blatstein deputy assistant directorJohns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory named Dr. Ira M. Blatstein as deputy assistant director for programs at the national security research and development facility in Laurel. He will assist in management of technical programs and strategic plan implementation.A doctoral graduate of Catholic University, the Silver Spring resident is the recently retired acting commander and technical director at Naval Surface Warfare Center Headquarters.

It isn't easy to find agreement in the telecommunications industry these days.Long-distance phone companies argue with local phone companies over market access. Digital wireless phone companies bicker with each other over product standards. Every new technology, it seems, has ardent defenders and vehement critics.But the region's telecommunications companies agree on one point -- this year will be another big year for a booming industry."The industry will continue to expand, and we don't see any slowing of that," said Steve Chaddick, senior vice president for products and technology at Ciena Corp.

Where Blair Levin works in downtown Washington, it's usually hard to find parking on the street. But he had thought this one time might be a little different."

Jeong H. Kim built his company on an obscure technology called ATM. No, this ATM is not an automated teller machine. But it will let him make more trips to the bank than most people could ever imagine.That's because the 36-year old former Navy submarine officer and Johns Hopkins-trained engineer took his 4-year-old company public Feb. 5 in the midst of an historic initial public offering boom. When he did, Yurie Systems Inc. of Lanham turned out to be one of the top initial public offerings of the young year.