If you clear the loan of eight hundred thousand in under ten years you will be given the one-time option to buy the remaining sixty per cent of the company for a further three million dollars.

Merck & Company said yesterday that it was giving each of its 37,000 employees a one-time option to buy 100 shares of Merck's common stock at $127.25 a share.

This gives borrowers a one-time option of changing to a fixed-rate mortgage sometime between the second and fifth years of the loan for a modest fee of about $250.

The Knicks had considered waiving Houston to save about $40 million in luxury taxes on his salary, under a one-time option provided by the new collective bargaining agreement.

Currently, college graduates have a one-time option of combining their educational loans for as long as 30 years at below-market rates, now around 3 percent.

Each of Merck's 37,000 employees is getting a one-time option to buy 100 shares of its common stock at $127.25 a share - about $3 below current prices.

Under the N.B.A.'s so-called amnesty provision, every team had a one-time option - which expired yesterday - to waive a player and not pay the luxury tax on his contract.

Merck said it was giving each of its 37,000 employees a one-time option to buy 100 shares of stock at $127.25.

Mr. Wyly has until Feb. 23, 1998, to exercise the one-time option, but he can do so at any time.

The best he could get was a one-time option to expand, at market rents, in the sixth year of the lease.