Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Thursday, July 10, 1997

Federal bank helps fund
isle housing projects

Three Hawaii banks have been awarded a total of $460,000 by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle to help finance the development of 102 homes and apartments for low-income residents and improve existing housing.

First Hawaiian Bank received $250,000 for infrastructure improvements at the Hamakua affordable housing project on the Big Island, helping 73 families. American Savings Bank won a $110,000 grant for technical help to seven Molokai families who are building their own homes.

Bank of Hawaii got $100,000 to help Lokahi Pacific, a nonprofit affordable housing developer on Maui, finance the construction of 20 apartments for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse, people with AIDS and others with special needs.

30-year mortgage rates
fall to 7.47 percent

WASHINGTON -- The average thirty-year home mortgage rate fell to 7.47 percent this week from 7.62 percent last week, said a survey released today by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.

The average one-year adjustable mortgage rate fell to 5.53 percent from 5.67 percent last week. Fifteen-year mortgage rates averaged 7.01 percent, down from 7.15 percent, Bloomberg News reported.

Clinton names lawyer,
professor to Fed board

WARSAW, Poland -- President Clinton named Edward M. Gramlich, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, and Roger W. Ferguson Jr., a securities and banking lawyer, to the Federal Reserve Board today.

Gramlich is a former acting director of the Congressional Budget Office and worked at the Federal Reserve. Ferguson, a partner and director of research and information systems at McKinsey & Co. in New York, holds three degrees from Harvard University.

Their confirmations would bring the seven-member Fed board back up to full strength.

In other news ...

NEW YORK -- The name ValuJet, widely associated with an airline disaster that killed 110 people last year, is to disappear after the company decided to merge with AirWays Corp., parent of the Florida-based AirTran Airways. ValuJet Inc., parent of ValuJet Airlines, is effectively taking over AirWays in a $68.6 million deal. The new parent will be named AirTran Holdings and ValuJet Airlines will be renamed AirTran Airlines.