Business highlights

Uniroyal Inc., the rubber, plastics, and chemicals concern, has agreed to a leveraged buyout by the investment firm Clayton & Dubilier Inc. The company has been the object of several takeover bids, the most prominent by financier Carl Icahn. The Clayton & Dubilier deal, approved by the Uniroyal board, needs the OK of stockholders and federal regulators. At $22 a share, the deal would be worth nearly $746 million.

Uniroyal chairman Joseph P. Flannery plans to participate as an investor in the deal and remain head of the company. He earlier expressed his willingness to see the company sold but considered an $18-a-share offer by Mr. Icahn too low. In a leveraged buyout, a group that usually includes management buys a company using mostly borrowed money, to be repaid from future revenue or sale of company assets.

In another leveraged buyout, the chairman of Storer Communications Inc., the nation's fifth-largest cable company, told stockholders Tuesday he expects a buyout arranged by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. to be complete by the end of the year. But representatives of a dissident shareholder group that wants to sell the company questioned whether the deal could be completed within the year. Storer chairman Peter Storer estimates the deal is was worth $87.50 a share. Storer's management would continue to run the company.

The Saudi Arabian oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani, says world demand for oil has hit a low but OPEC is determined to preserve the present price structure. ``We are determined not to allow prices to drop below their current level,'' he told the Kuwait newspaper Al-Watan. Saudi Arabia is the leading producer in the 13-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC has been forced to reduce its production ceiling and prices because of a worldwide glut of oil.

Brazilian President Jos'e Sarney said Tuesday his nation will pay off its $100 billion foreign debt but wants to renegotiate the terms. Mr. Sarney, who succeeded President-elect Tancredo Neves, made that point in his first major political and economic address. The International Monetary Fund and foreign banks, which have provided billions of dollars in emergency funds, have insisted Brazil cut spending and inflation, now at 228 percent.

Americans' personal income increased more than twice as fast as prices over the past three years, according to the Commerce Department. The 8.7 percent rise in per capita income in 1984 wrapped up a three-year period in which income rose 14.3 percent and prices 7 percent. Only those in Alaska, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Montana failed to stay ahead of inflation. Alaska led in raw income in '84 -- $17,155 per person -- despite a three-year gain of only 1.8 percent. Connecticut was second, at $16,369, and Mississippi last, at $8,857 per capita. The United States average was $12,707 per person.