Business Notes MERGERS

The bolder the reach, the more it suits him. Sanford Weill, who resigned as president of American Express in 1985, has since made daring but unsuccessful bids to take over BankAmerica and the consumer-loan subsidiary of Manufacturers Hanover Trust. Last week Weill's persistence paid off. Commercial Credit Group, the Baltimore-based consumer-finance company (assets: $4.4 billion) he now heads, agreed to take over Primerica, a Connecticut-based financial-services firm that has three times the assets of Weill's corporation and owns the Smith Barney brokerage firm.

The $1.7 billion buyout, to be financed mostly by giving Commercial Credit stock to Primerica shareholders, marks a triumphant return to Wall Street for Weill, 55, who built the investment firm that has become Shearson Lehman Hutton. What gave Weill his opportunity was a strategic miscalculation by Primerica Chairman Gerald Tsai, 59, who paid a lofty $750 million for Smith Barney just a few months before last year's crash. The debt he incurred in buying the firm became burdensome when Smith Barney's brokerage business sagged after Black Monday. Weill, as head of the combined firm, intends to sell Primerica's mail-order businesses in plants and specialty foods. Then he aims to create a financial-supermarket firm comparable in size to Merrill Lynch.