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Isle biotech firm wins VC award
Hawaii Biotechnology Group Inc. will receive its third Venture Capital Deal of the Year award from the Hawaii Venture Capital Association.The company will receive the award Dec. 5 at the association's meeting. The 20-year-old company is engaged in biopharmaceutical research and development.
The HVCA award honors companies with Hawaii operations that have successfully raised venture capital and angel investor financing. Other local companies who have received the award are hotU and 4Charity.com.
Credit union pays $2.7 million
The Hawaii State Federal Credit Union said yesterday that $2.7 million in bonus dividends and interest rebates were returned to its members this year. The award amounts were calculated at 13 percent of dividends and interest earned or paid by members for the first nine months of the year.HSFCU said it has given back more than $26.9 million to its members since the program began in 1996.
Legal Aid Society gets HUD grant
The Legal Aid Society of Hawaii's education and outreach program has received $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to promote fair housing in Hawaii.The society plans to promote fair housing through community housing agencies and organizations. The activities will include distributing fair housing materials and conducting training with a concentration on public awareness, support and enforcement services to low-income families. The federal assistance is part of $20.3 million in HUD fair housing grants being awarded around the country.
Retailers warn against port closure
WASHINGTON >> A trade group for retailers such as Gap Inc. and Target Corp. urged labor-union and shipping- company negotiators to avoid a second shutdown of West Coast ports, saying it would cause "catastrophic" damage to the economy.The National Retail Federation said 39 percent of its members expect shortages of merchandise during the holiday-shopping season because of a backlog of toys, clothing and food to be unloaded after a 10-day lockout in September and October, Bloomberg News reported. Closing ports a second time would be "a devastating blow to the already fragile U.S. economy," the Washington-based trade group said in a letter.
Kmart likely to close more stores, CEO says
DETROIT >> Kmart Corp. may have to close more stores as part of its restructuring under bankruptcy protection but the number will be nowhere near the 500-plus stores that were rumored to be on the block, Kmart's chief executive said yesterday.Kmart Chairman and CEO James B. Adamson called "erroneous" a report in the Atlanta Business Chronicle saying the retailer would close 567 stores.
"We haven't determined how many stores, where they're going to be located," Adamson said. "... We're going to close as few stores as possible and we're going to give stores a chance to get fixed."
Adamson said a decision on store closings was expected in early January.
IBM seeks to regain supercomputer title
NEW YORK >> In a computing power struggle tinged with national pride, IBM Corp. says it hopes to regain the title for world's fastest supercomputer from Japan's NEC Corp. in 2004 when Big Blue delivers a machine to model nuclear weapons. Japan's NEC jolted the computer world in April when its Earth Simulator, which knits together 5,000 processors to attain a theoretical speed of 40 trillion calculations per second, became the first machine built outside the United States to top the supercomputer speed list.
