---

BACK TO TOP
|

Outrigger rebrands condo sites

Outrigger Hotels & Resorts has launched a new marketing effort to distinguish its 10 resort condominium properties in Hawaii from its other 40 hotels and resorts in the Pacific.

Outrigger plans to market the condos as "Outrigger's Condominium Collection." Efforts will include an eight-page color advertisement that will hit travel trade publications late this month, as well as cross promotions with radio stations, television, Internet and wholesale partners in the summer.

Honolulu-based Outrigger said it revised its marketing materials earlier this year to include "Outrigger" in the names of the condos.

Outrigger said it has four condos on Maui, three on the Big Island, two on Kauai and one on Oahu, and they are primarily low-rise beachfront properties.

HVCB gets meetings award

Readers of Successful Meetings magazine have given the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau its 13th consecutive Pinnacle Award to honor the bureau's meetings and conventions services.

The criteria included service and support to clients, registration and housing assistance, quality of facilities and promotional support. Meeting planners often check the list of Pinnacle winners when considering meeting sites, the bureau said.

Longs shares up on buyout report

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. >> Shares of Longs Drug Stores Corp. rose as much as 17 percent after Business Week said the company may get a new buyout offer from grocer Safeway Inc., which was believed to have been rebuffed two years ago.

The company's shares closed up $1.24 to $15.48 on the New York Stock Exchange after earlier climbing to $16.60. They had fallen 55 percent in the past year.

A leveraged buyout group also is looking closely at Longs, the magazine reported in its "Inside Wall Street" column, citing an unidentified hedge fund manager who owns more than 5 percent of the stock. Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Long's operates more than 460 drug stores in Hawaii and five other western U.S. states.

Longs spokeswoman Nancy Cockerham and Safeway spokeswoman Julie Hong couldn't be reached for comment by Bloomberg News.

Dole, Dow Chemical sued by Nicaraguans

LOS ANGELES >> Dole Food Co., Dow Chemical Co. and Royal Dutch/Shell Group were sued by Nicaraguans seeking to enforce $489 million in judgments obtained in their country for injuries caused by exposure to pesticides, Bloomberg News reported.

A Nicaraguan judge entered the judgments on behalf of hundreds of banana plantation workers in January after a series of hearings where the lawyers for companies failed to contest the evidence, according to the lawsuit.

Suits on behalf of at least 16,000 Latin American workers have been filed in U.S. courts over the past two decades, seeking damages from chemical companies that made the pesticide dibromochloropropane and fruit companies that used it. U.S. judges have dismissed most of the cases, often on the grounds that the workers must use the courts in their home countries.

"In fact, defendants have successfully argued" that the litigation should be tried in Nicaragua, according to the suit.

In other news ...

>> Rates on 30-year mortgages dropped to a record low this week, the sixth time that has happened this year, with the average interest rate on a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage at 5.45 percent, down from 5.62 percent the week before, Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported.

>> Consumer prices fell by 0.3 percent in April, the biggest decline in 18 months, led by a retreat in energy prices as the Iraq war wound down. Prices for cars, clothes and food also went down.

>> April housing starts dropped by 6.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.63 million.

---

BACK TO TOP
|

[Hawaii Inc.]

New jobs

>> Timothy J. Deegan has established Deegan & Associates, a marketing, media and creative agency. Prior to establishing D&A, Deegan handled the advertising account for Outrigger Hotels & Resorts.

>> Rebecca A. Yee has joined Baldridge & Associates Structural Engineering Inc. as a project engineer. She has worked on medical facilities in California, including the University of Southern California Replacement Hospital and the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula.

>> Hawaiiana Management Company Ltd., has named Venissa Ah Sam, Annette Beyler and B. Joseph Connolly management executives. Ah Sam was most recently a community association manager with Chaney, Brooks & Co. and has more than five years of experience in the property management field. Connolly spent 17 years in the field of law enforcement. Beyler returns to Hawaiiana after a 12-month hiatus on the mainland, where she was responsible for operations of a new apartment community for Florida-based Vestcor Realty Management.

>> Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa has hired Kalani Nakoa as director of sales and marketing. He has 23 years of experience in the hospitality industry, most recently associate director of sales for the Hyatt Regency Kauai Resort & Spa.

>> HomeStreet Bank has hired Patrick Nitta as a loan officer at its Maui branch. He most recently served as finance director and executive assistant to Mayor James "Kimo" Apana.