Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Tuesday, November 10, 1998
HVCB markets isles in 4 German cities
The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau is visiting four cities in northern Germany this week to market the state with cuisine, music and dance.Gina Chun, the bureau's director of travel industry sales international, said the marketing campaign comes at a time when Germans are planning winter vacations. Events are being held in Frankfurt, Duesseldorf, Hanover and Hamburg.
Straub's top exec to retire next year
Dr. Blake E. Waterhouse plans to retire as chief executive at Straub Clinic & Hospital next year.Waterhouse, who joined Straub in 1990, served as president and CEO between 1990 and 1997. He has since been chief executive officer. A hospital spokeswoman said Waterhouse, 61, had planned to retire and will leave no later than Dec. 31, 1999. No successor has been named.
Waterhouse previously was president and CEO for the Physicians Plus Medical Group in Madison, Wis.
Straub, which last year merged with PhyCor Inc., a Nashville, Tenn.-based management company, is one of Hawaii's largest health care providers. The hospital has a network of 20 neighborhood clinics and employs nearly 200 physicians and 2,000 workers.
Subway teams up with pizza chain
Subway Restaurants and a Baltimore-based pizza chain have opened a fast-food restaurant at Nuuanu Shopping Plaza.The 1,500-square-foot restaurant, mamma ilardo's Express/Subway, is the first by the partnership outside the mainland. It will offer pizzas and sandwiches.
K-Tel shares soar again after Microsoft deal
NEW YORK -- The stock of K-tel International Inc. soared more than 98 percent today after the music retailer said software giant Microsoft Corp. will include K-tel's online-music and home-video service on its shopping service on the World Wide Web.MSN Shopping will feature links to K-tel Express in its music and home videos department.
The deal also will allow Microsoft to include links to the K-tel site in other properties it owns or operates.
Last week, K-tel's stock catapulted 100 percent to finish at $13.25 after the company, best known for its oldies collections, said it had reached an agreement with Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s Playboy Online unit to develop an online music store in time for the holidays.
In Nasdaq trading, shares of K-tel, based in Minneapolis, surged $11.371/2 to $22.94
CompUSA's net falls 65% in third quarter
DALLAS -- CompUSA Inc., the largest U.S. computer retailer, said fiscal first-quarter profit fell 65 percent because of lower PC prices, slower sales to businesses and costs tied to its recent purchase of rival Computer City.Net income fell to $8.14 million, or 9 cents a share, from $23.5 million, or 25 cents, a year earlier. The results beat the 7-cent average estimate of analysts polled by First Call Corp.
The retailer also said falling PC prices will likely result in a low-single-digit decline in sales at stores open at least a year in the second quarter, following a 1.7 percent drop this quarter.
U.S. productivity rate increases 2.3 percent
WASHINGTON -- Growth in American workers' productivity, the key to rising living standards, improved in the July-September period after nearly stalling during the previous quarter.The productivity of nonfarm, nonsupervisory workers -- measured as output per hour of work -- rose at a seasonally adjusted 2.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the Labor Department said today.
During the April-June period, productivity advanced at a scant 0.3 percent rate, the slowest increase in nearly two years.
Wal-Mart earnings beat forecasts, rise 27%
BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said fiscal third-quarter profit rose a better-than-expected 27 percent as the discount chain kept a lid on costs and sold more household items.Net income rose to $1.01 billion, or 45 cents a share, from $792 million, or 35 cents, a year earlier.
That beat by 2 cents the average estimate of analysts surveyed by First Call Corp. for the quarter ended Oct. 31, according to Bloomberg News.
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