Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Monday, August 4, 1997

Mauna Loa Macadamia
reports net turnaround

Mauna Loa Macadamia Partners, L.P. had a profit of $43,000, or 1 cent a share, for the second quarter, which ended June 30. It was a turnaround from a loss of $56,000 in the year-earlier quarter.

Sales of $476,000 were down from $519,000 in the 1996 quarter but the Big Island grower and marketer of macadamia nuts trimmed its expenses and also had interest income.

ITT sells Vegas hotel
to billionaire Davis

NEW YORK -- ITT Corp. is selling half of the Desert Inn, a prominent Las Vegas hotel and casino, to billionaire investor Marvin Davis for $250 million in cash.

The sale disclosed yesterday comes after ITT sold its stake in Madison Square Garden and several hotels and announced a second three-way split in efforts to repel a $6.5 billion hostile takeover bid from Hilton Hotels Corp.

Under the deal with Davis, ITT will continue to manage the 700-room Desert Inn for at least 10 years. Over the next two years, both owners will study the possibility of building a new resort on an adjacent property.

The deal also marks the first entry into the gambling business for Davis.

Microsoft completes
buyout of WebTV

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft Corp. has completed the acquisition of WebTV Networks Inc. for about $425 million in cash and stock, following a Justice Department review.

WebTV, based in Palo Alto, Calif., sells technology that allows consumers to tap into the World Wide Web through specially equipped televisions. The deal, announced April 6, was studied for nearly four months by the Justice Department to see if it threatened competition.

"The investigation confirmed that a number of other companies, several of whom are significant participants in the computer or consumer-electronics industries, have or will soon enter the market with competitive products and alternative technologies," the department's antitrust division said in a statement issued Friday.

Some competitors argued that Microsoft could use the acquisition to unfairly influence standards governing communications and information services to the home.