SCM’s dismemberment was delayed for a week.

Officials of SCM Corp. and a buy-out group led by Merrill Lynch agreed to delay the deal, in which Merrill Lynch would at least obtain SCM’s profitable pigments and Durkee frozen food lines for $430 million. That sale, previously scheduled for next Monday, now would take place Oct. 28. U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram said she would hear four days of arguments beginning Monday on Hanson Trust’s claim that the deal would wrongly strip SCM of assets worth up to $700 million simply to make Hanson’s hostile takeover of SCM prohibitively expensive.