CONTRACTS: Blow to the Bottom Line

Already hassled, harangued and humiliated because one of its subsidiaries was caught making illegal sales of high-tech equipment to the Soviet Union, Japan’s Toshiba last week suffered the first major blow to its bottom line. The Pentagon spurned Toshiba and awarded a $104 million contract for 90,000 laptop computers to rival bidder Zenith Electronics. The Glenview, Ill., company, which is already a large Government supplier, might have won the contract anyway, but Toshiba’s new notoriety nullified whatever chance the Japanese company had.