21.   As the deal to buy Grumman started to crumble, merger talks between Lockheed and Martin Marietta began.

22.   At first, his secret merger talks last year with the company he coveted, the Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corporation, were friendly.

23.   Ballet Chicago, an exemplary but financially pressed company directed by Daniel Duell, even held merger talks with the Joffrey.

24.   Bank of Boston and Corestates entered into merger talks after at least two attempts by Bank of Boston to find a partner failed.

25.   Barely weeks earlier, merger talks with SBC had collapsed.

26.   Bell Atlantic and Nynex are both eager to resolve their merger talks, which have gone on longer than a Manhattan telephone directory.

27.   Boeing Co. declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal Europe report that it and McDonnell Douglas Corp. have broken off exploratory merger talks.

28.   Boeing Co. and McDonnell Douglas Corp. are in merger talks to create a company making civil aircraft, jet fighters, rocket launchers and space operations.

29.   Both banks declined to comment on any merger talks.

30.   Both companies have continued neither to deny nor to confirm that they have held merger talks, though it is widely assumed that such talks are taking place.