Also. . .

* Ratos, a Swedish investment company, agreed to buy El Segundo-based Farr Co. for $141 million in cash, as part of a plan to merge the U.S. filtration products maker with Sweden’s Camfil. The offer of $17.45 per share is 47% above Friday’s closing price and 67% more than the average price of Farr shares over the last 30 trading days. Farr shares surged $5.31 to close at $17.19, a 52-week high, on Nasdaq.

* Xerox Corp., the world’s No. 1 copier company, plans to announce this week that it will cut at least 2,500 jobs to reduce costs and take a pretax, first-quarter charge of as much as $700 million, analysts said. Xerox has said the cuts will be fewer than the 10,000 eliminated in a 1998 restructuring program.

* US Airways Group Inc., the sixth-largest U.S. airline, cut leisure fares to win back customers after it reached an agreement on a tentative contract with flight attendants and avoided a shutdown. The airline cut some fares by more than half, putting most international and U.S. leisure fares on sale.

* Waste Management Inc., the largest U.S. trash hauler, reported a fourth-quarter loss because it spent $360 million to fix its accounting and computer systems, and invested in landfills and new garbage trucks. The company had a loss of $114.7 million, or 19 cents a share, contrasted with net income of $63.5 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time costs, Waste Management said it would have earned $200 million, or 32 cents.