Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Tuesday, September 9, 1997

State Farm plans
to offer lower rates

The state's largest auto insurer plans to announce lower rates for its local customers, sources said.

State Farm Insurance Co. said it will hold a news conference tomorrow morning to announce significant changes affecting its 119,000 mutual policy holders in Hawaii. The company declined to provide details until tomorrow.

State Insurance Commissioner Rey Graulty, who oversees auto insurance rate filings, could not be reached for immediate comment.

State Farm's move comes as Allstate Insurance Co., the state's third largest auto insurer, said it is reducing premiums by 5.4 percent. A smaller insurer, Dai-Tokyo Royal State Insurance Co., also recently announced that it would lower its no-fault rates by 13 percent.

Phycor completes deal
for Maui Medical assets

Phycor Inc., a Nashville, Tenn.-based manager of physicians' services and clinics, said today it completed its acquisition of certain assets of Maui Medical Group Inc. and entered into a long-term service agreement with the 32-doctor group. Other details were not disclosed. Maui Medical in June disclosed that Phycor would inject new capital into the group and acquire assets such as equipment and furniture but not Maui Medical's real estate.

Phycor earlier this year completed a merger with Straub Clinic & Hospital Inc. in Honolulu.

Special fare offered for
Oahu-Moscow travelers

A new partnership with American Airlines now allows travelers from Honolulu to join a Russian airline in Los Angeles for nonstop flights from there to Moscow.

The Honolulu-Los Angeles leg will be at no additional charge to the Los Angeles-Moscow fare.

Transaero Airlines, which flies Los Angeles-Moscow twice a week, said today that American Airlines also will bring passengers from Las Vegas and the California cities of San Diego, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Fresno and Santa Barbara.

The passengers will pay only the Los Angeles-Moscow fare, currently $1,340 for coach class and $2,631 for business class for an advance-purchase round trip.

FDIC background check
starts for isle resident

With an eye to nominating her to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Clinton administration has begun background checks on Donna Tanoue, a former Hawaii banking commissioner who now practices law in Honolulu, the American Banker newspaper reported.

Tanoue was Hawaii's commissioner of financial institutions from 1982 to 1987, served as Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's campaign manager in 1992 and in 1995 was appointed to the University of Hawaii board of regents.

She is a partner with Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel.