August 12, 2007 — Many people don’t have enough disability insurance coverage and find out too late that New York’s disability program is insufficient.

“It is atrocious,” says James Tissot, a financial planner in Manhattan. People sometimes try to supplement the inadequate state coverage with private policies, but fall into a trap: They discover a cheap policy won’t pay if someone is unable to do his or her job - but could still do another other kind of work.

A quality policy will pay the specialized professional when he or she can’t do a job because of a disability. Tissot lists three types of disability insurance: own occupation, the highest quality, any occupation suited by training or education, and any occupation, which is the cheapest.

The right disability insurance can be very important for someone in a high income, specialized profession. That’s because the average worker is more likely to suffer some form of disability than death.

International Paper, the largest maker of forest products in the world, agreed Monday to buy the containerboard, packaging and recycling operations of Weyerhaeuser for $6 billion to expand in the United States and Mexico.

The cash transaction includes nine containerboard mills, 72 packaging factories and other sites, which together have 14,300 workers. The net purchase price is equal to about $4.6 billion including tax benefits, International Paper said.

International Paper, based in Memphis, Tennessee, expects to save $400 million in expenses by integrating the factories of Weyerhaeuser, which is based in Washington State.

North American paper companies are merging and cutting capacity to defend profit margins, under pressure from higher costs for fiber and energy. The chief executive of International Paper, John Faraci, has sold timberlands, sawmills and beverage packaging units to focus on fine paper and corrugated cardboard, two markets where prices are holding up better.

“This deal represents a compelling opportunity,” Faraci said in the statement. “We expect the combined packaging business will generate stronger cash flow” and higher margins than either standalone business.

International Papers shares are little changed this year, giving the company a market value of $13.8 billion.

Shares in Smurfit-Stone Container, a rival U.S. maker of corrugated boxes, have dropped 29 percent this year.

International Paper will finance the transaction through debt, and the company has commitments from several lenders.

The acquisition will add to earnings in 2009, with 40 percent of the targeted benefits coming through within 12 months of completion.

The companys new mills will serve the United States and Mexico, Faraci said.

The mills will be added to a portfolio that includes a corrugated box factory in Morocco, a pulp and paper mill in Brazil, and a 50 percent stake in Ilim Group of Russia, which makes pulp, paper and board.

“All of this will make our packaging business more competitive, more profitable and better able to serve customers,” Carol Roberts, the senior vice president, said in the statement.

For Weyerhaeuser, the deal is another reversal in an expansion strategy from the 1960s in which it diversified into timber-related markets through acquisitions. Weyerhaeuser, the largest timber company in North America and founded more than 100 years ago, sold its fine-paper assets to Domtar last year.

International Paper exited its lumber division through a deal with West Fraser Timber of Canada last year. West Fraser became the second-largest lumber producer in North America with this purchase.

Amid the torrent of clothes, electronics and toys surging out of China comes a little-noticed export: international companies.

For centuries, individual Chinese have sought their fortunes abroad, creating Chinatowns around their restaurants and shops.

Now Chinese companies are going global, pushed by a government turned capitalist, pulled by untapped markets and armed with bundles of money from a thriving economy back home.

Automobile factories are popping up in Latin America. A sprawling commodity bazaar promises new life for a provincial Swedish city. A car parts distributor is acquiring troubled companies in the United States, a television factory is busy in South Africa, and a high-technology company is winning contracts to overhaul telecommunication networks in the Gulf.

Just as Japanese companies changed U.S. manufacturing in an earlier era, Chinese companies could eventually influence the ways in which their Western rivals approach innovation, competition and business itself.

“We not only consider ourselves pioneers,” says Sean Chen, who at 26 is overseeing the construction of a $100 million electrical parts factory and industrial park in the southern United States. “We also consider ourselves explorers.”

Chen and his fiancйe, Joy Chen - both took American first names - moved from Shanghai to Atlanta to set up shop for General Protecht Group, a company controlled by his father. While the goal is profit, Sean Chen and his father view the venture almost as a social experiment - its aim, he said through an interpreter, is to marry the best Chinese and U.S. work practices.

“I want to have the efficiency and execution normally shown by the American employees and the brotherhood that a Chinese company normally shows,” Sean Chen said. “There are capitalists and there are socialists and I want to see whether they can get along.”

The Chinese corporate presence is still small overseas, but it is growing fast.

Chinese companies invested more than $30 billion in foreign companies from 1996 to 2005, nearly $10 billion in 2004 and 2005 alone, according to an analysis by Usha Haley, a professor of international business at the University of New Haven. Lenovo helped start the frenzy in December 2004 by announcing it would acquire IBMs personal computer unit for $1.75 billion.

In the United States and Canada, Chinese companies now have about 3,500 investment projects, compared to 1,500 five years ago, according to an estimate by Ping Deng, a professor at Maryville University. Large state-owned companies jumped ahead; medium and small private companies are catching up.

Total investment in the United States is $4 billion to $7 billion, Ping said. In Europe, Chinese acquisitions last year totaled $563.3 million, according to the research company Dealogic.

Last year, 29 Chinese companies made their debut on U.S. stock exchanges, compared with 27 for the previous three years combined, according to the Bank of New York Mellon.

The number of U.S. visas issued to Chinese executives and managers who transferred to U.S. jobs within their companies nearly doubled to 2,043 between the 2004 and 2007 fiscal years. The current fiscal year is on pace to top that number, according to U.S. State Department data.

Chinese businesses are not just establishing offices and factories overseas. They also are developing and selling products under their own brands, rather than simply supplying Western companies in search of cheap manufacturing.

The competition may make it harder for U.S. and European companies to milk early profits from cutting-edge products before reducing prices and releasing them to the mass market. Vulnerable sectors include high-definition televisions, portable DVD players, medical technology and perhaps even cars, said Peter Williamson, a professor of international management at the University of Cambridge.

At the Detroit Auto Show in January, a midsize sports utility vehicle from China with features including a leather interior was priced at just $14,000 - less than half of what many comparable cars cost. Models could be available by early next year in nine U.S. states.

Chinese companies can use their low-cost manufacturing advantage to add features. And they can do that by copying influential Western companies, circumventing the expense of product development. If the quality is high enough, the strategy can be devastating.

“It will pull to pieces the profit models of their competitors,” Williamson said. “Its a classic case of attacking your competitor where you know theyre reluctant to respond, because its very costly.”

The dynamic recalls how Japanese automakers forced their U.S. competitors to make options such as power windows and air conditioning standard.

Unlike the Japanese, whose high-profile arrival in the United States in the 1980s was at first greeted as a threat, Chinese businesses are being courted by states including Michigan, California, Illinois and Georgia.