Today's WSJ has sidebar stating that franchise chains must tell prospective owners about their y2k remediation status. This only applies to 14 "registration states" including Calif., Mich. and NY. Same principle could have nation-wide application under FTC ban against "unfair and deceptive practices."

The Journal quoted a Chicago headhunting firm, Franchise Recruiters, as stating that franchise executives were in "significant distress" over the issue as a survey of 100 top executives showed that "virtually no individual sampled in the survey had a plan in place yet to survive the millennium malady."

The date of the survey is not mentioned by the Journal, presumably it is recent. Article also doesn't elaborate whether "plan" means contingency plans or simply internal remediation.

Of course, this *may* be a hyped presentation by the Journal, since legally mandated disclosures have a time-honored tradition of neuroticly dwelling on arcane risks and overblown warnings, so that you really need to be an insider in a company or industry to be able to evaluate the risks section of a prospectus.

Any comments from prospective franchise buyers in NY, CA or MI?

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 30, 1999