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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Monday, April 24, 2000

Castle & Cooke delays meeting

Castle & Cooke Inc. said today its annual shareholders meeting, which was scheduled for May 9 in Westlake Village, Calif., has been canceled and will be rescheduled after a special committee of independent directors has finished evaluating a takeover offer.

The Los Angeles-based developer of residential and commercial real estate in Hawaii and on the mainland has received an offer worth about $565 million from Flexi-Van Leasing Co., a company wholly owned by Castle & Cooke Chairman David H. Murdock.

Flexi-Van is seeking to buy the 73 percent not currently owned by Murdock for $17 a share and its offer includes assuming Castle & Cooke's debt.

Castle & Cooke's shares closed today at $17.87 .

Hotel spa business heats up in Waikiki

Oahu's full-service spa business has expanded another step with the opening of the Hawaiian Rainforest Salon & Spa in the Pacific Beach Hotel on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki.

The 2,000-square-foot spa, on the fourth floor next to the pool deck, has licensed therapists and cosmetologists who offer a range of services from haircuts to massages, herbal body wraps and baths.

The JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa at Ko Olina has had a major spa since it opened in 1993 and the Hyatt Regency Waikiki officially opened its spa last week.

Bankoh unit hires service division

The Bank of New York has been selected to provide worldwide custody services to Pacific Century Trust, a division of Bank of Hawaii.

A spokesman said custody means the physical storage and handling of stock certificates and other such physical assets held in a variety of investment, corporate or personal trusts.

Bank of Hawaii, the main subsidiary of Pacific Century Financial Corp., said the trust division decided to consolidate all of its custody with the Bank of New York because of its efficiency and commitment to the bank and trust market.

Pacific Century Trust oversees about $14 billion in total trust assets.

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Of Mutual Concern

News for mutual fund investors

Pilgrim manager quits technology, equity funds

WAYNE, Pa. -- Frank "Quint" Slattery, the top-performing U.S. mutual fund manager the past year, quit Pilgrim Baxter & Associates, the latest money manager of a surging technology fund to seek more lucrative employment.

Slattery, the fourth Pilgrim Baxter manager to leave in the past year, will be replaced by a group led by Chief Investment Officer Gary Pilgrim. The 27-year-old managed the $459 million PBHG New Opportunities Fund since its February 1999 inception and the $1.5 billion PBHG Select Equity Fund for five months. Pilgrim Baxter said Slattery is leaving to pursue other opportunities.

Slattery's departure follows James McCall's jump to Merrill Lynch & Co. from Pilgrim, which ignited a since-settled legal battle. Michael Hahn also left for Merrill last year and Gary Haubold left in June to start his own hedge fund.

Merrill Lynch manager banished big tech stocks

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. helped Lawrence Fuller's fund beat the Standard & Poor's 500 index in 1998, only to get booted from his portfolio starting early last year. Those stocks, along with Dell Computer Corp. and Compaq Computer Corp., ranked as the Merrill Lynch Fundamental Growth Fund's top five holdings as of early January 1999, and Fuller succeeded in dumping 90 percent of those issues by late January or early February that year. Not a trace of them now exists in his $5 billion fund. The seven-year-old fund returned 36 percent in 1999, beating the Standard & Poor's 500 index by 15 percentage points. It beat the index by 6 percentage points in 1998. For the past five years, the fund ranks in the top 3 percent of all U.S.-based funds tracked by Bloomberg Fund Performance. Fuller thinks companies like Microsoft, Dell, Compaq and Intel Corp. -- another once-significant holding he's banished -- are vulnerable to price competition.

Investors held steady after huge selloff

NEW YORK -- Mutual fund investors held firm last Monday, apparently shrugging off the temptation to flee the stock markets in the wake of the previous week's huge selloff. Analysts said that resistance helped the markets bounce back from Aril 14's historic losses, when the Dow Jones industrial average fell 617.78 points and the Nasdaq composite index dropped 355.49.

Art Bonnel, portfolio manager of U.S. Global Investor's Bonnel Growth Fund, said most mutual fund investors don't concern themselves with temporary market fluctuations.

Firsthand Funds to focus on Internet infrastructure

BOSTON -- An intense focus on Internet infrastructure and a willingness to buck the market infatuation with dot-coms will allow Firsthand Funds to ride out the current market volatility without significant damage, says a senior company official.

Ken Pearlman, director of research at Firsthand Capital Management Inc, said that since Firsthand funds never invested in dot-coms, the decline of Internet sector stocks was not hurting returns at most of its funds. Firsthand, based in San Jose, Calif., manages about $7 billion in five funds. All invest exclusively in technology companies and the three that were in existence for all of 1999 produced triple-digit returns.

Four of the funds have produced double-digit returns so far this year, while one of them, the eCommerce Fund, is off about 24 percent for the year.

Pearlman acknowledged that his portfolio managers face greater market risk as investors' love affair with technology cools. But he anticipated little change in how the company operates. "We're really not going to change the way we do things," Pearlman said in an interview. The funds have been using tumbling tech stocks as a buying opportunity.

In other news . . .

BOSTON -- Fidelity Investments has rehired veteran mutual fund executive Neal Litvack to a position as its top marketing executive, the company said. Litvack, 44, will fill the management void since Stephen Cone quit as Fidelity's head of retail marketing in January. Litvack, formerly executive vice president of marketing at Nvest LP of Boston, will become president of retail marketing services at Fidelity, responsible for all marketing in the company's personal investments group.