Aftershocks from October's stock crash rumbled through Wall Street last week as several shaken brokerage houses took steps to bolster their financial health. First, Paine Webber agreed to sell up to 25% of its stock to Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance of Japan for $300 million. The brokerage, which lost $16.5 million in October, welcomed the investment as a defense against takeovers.
E.F. Hutton, on the other hand, sold itself to Shearson Lehman Bros. for about $1 billion. That will create a brokerage giant with $5.4 billion in capital, second in the U.S. only to Merrill Lynch's $8 billion, and a sales...
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