FERRUZZI NEGOTIATING EUROPEAN ACQUISITION

  Italy's &lt;Gruppo Ferruzzi> is in the
  advanced stages of negotiations that could result in an
  acquisition worth "some hundreds of billions of lire" in the
  European agro-industrial sector, a company spokesman told
  Reuters.
      The spokesman declined to identify the other party or
  parties involved in talks, or whether a complete takeover was
  under discussion, but said an Italian newspaper report that
  Ferruzzi was studying the possibility of advancing an offer for
  13 European cereal processing plants owned by the U.S. Group
  CPC International Inc &lt;CPC.N> was incorrect.
      The spokesman said that possibility had been evaluated by
  Ferruzzi but that the company's attention at the moment was
  "decisively in another direction."
      The spokesman, responding to a report in the Italian
  economic daily Il Sole-24 Ore that Ferruzzi was considering a
  possible bid for the CPC plants, told Reuters his company hoped
  to conclude the talks currently underway in a couple of months.
      The spokesman said that since the U.K. Government last
  month blocked Ferruzzi's bid to acquire &lt;British Sugar Plc>,
  the company had been looking at other investment opportunities.
  

