Business Notes ENTERTAINMENT

What do Consolidated Cigar and the Richmond Screw Anchor Co. have in common? Both were once owned by the quintessential conglomerate of the 1960s: Gulf & Western. The diverse mix of businesses proved so unmanageable by the early 1980s that G&W Chairman Martin Davis launched a campaign to spin off more than 100 subsidiaries. Last week the company once known as Engulf & Devour said it will sell one of its few remaining divisions, Associates First Capital Corp., a financial services company. Davis hopes to use the estimated $3 billion in proceeds to assemble a world-class media and entertainment giant. The restructured company, which already owns Paramount Pictures and Simon & Schuster/Prentice-Hall, will be renamed Paramount Communications.