Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Thursday, June 13, 1996

30-year mortgage rates climb
to 8.39 percent

WASHINGTON - Thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 8.39 percent this week, according to a national survey released on Thursday by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.

The average was up from 8.30 percent last week and the highest since it was 8.41 percent during the week ended April 6, 1995.

On one-year adjustable rate mortgages, lenders were asking an average initial rate of 5.91 percent, up from 5.86 percent last week.

Fifteen-year mortgages, a popular option for those refinancing mortgages, averaged 7.90 percent this week, up from 7.80 percent a week earlier.

The rates do not include add-on fees known as points.


New Rella Mae owner plans $200,000 refurbishing

New owners say they will spend $200,000 for interior renovations on the 1,000-passenger dinner sailing vessel Rella Mae to soften its look and give it more of a Hawaiian nautical ambience.

ACES Dinner Cruises, a Hawaii subsidiary of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.'s Millamax, recently bought Windjammer Cruises, consisting of the Rella Mae and a 140-passenger glass-bottom sightseeing boat, Coral See.

Koen Witteveen, ACES executive vice president, said the Coral See just underwent a $35,000 renovation. He added that the Rella Mae will get a Hawaiian name.


Senate to vote June 20
on Greenspan, nominees

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on Thursday announced that Democrats agreed to allow a June 20 vote on the long-delayed nomination of Alan Greenspan to serve another term as Federal Reserve Board chairman.

The agreement also paves the way for a vote on the nominations of White House budget director Alice Rivlin as vice chairwoman and economist Laurence Meyer as a governor of the Fed.


For more local, national and international business news,
see the Hawaii Inc. section in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.



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