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Bankers' hours head to Waikoloa

The American Bankers Association is coming to Hilton Waikoloa Village for a five-day conference starting Sept. 20, bringing 1,500 participants to the Kohala Coast resort on the Big Island.

The bankers wanted a hotel big enough to house the entire gathering, and also chose the Waikoloa because of its partnering between activities, golf and meeting facilities.

The 1,240-room hotel has played host this year to IBM, Verizon, the American Heart Association, Prudential, the Sherwin-Williams Co. and Automatic Data Processing Inc.

Road Runner e-mail will be down

Road Runner cable modem customers will temporarily lose access to incoming e-mail at midnight tonight during a system upgrade meant to resolve e-mail problems experienced in the past couple week, and to speed services.

The upgrade, which will bring more capacity, will take place through 7 a.m., according to Oceanic Time Warner Cable. Incoming e-mail will be stored and can be retrieved after 7 a.m. Outgoing e-mail and Web services will not be affected.

Sunrise switches owners

Sunrise Construction Inc. of Kailua has changed ownership, according to a filing with the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

The change took effect Aug. 14, said Marcus Gillespie, the company president, who purchased the company from former owner Reed Spencer.

Gillespie had been with the company for 20 years. None of the company's 160 employees will be affected by the change, Gillespie said. Sunrise supplies single- and multi-family housing frames for developers such as Schuler Homes-Hawaii, Armstrong Builders and Stanford Carr Development.

Fleming adds new chief executive

Fleming Cos. said non-executive Chairman Archie Dykes has assumed the chief executive officer responsibilities after Peter Willmott completed his tenure as interim CEO and president.

Fleming, the largest U.S. grocery distributor when it sought bankruptcy protection in April, is exploring the possible sale of its Core-Mark International convenience-store supply operation, the company said. Core- Mark is based in South San Francisco, Calif.

Fleming earlier this month won a judge's permission to sell off its main business to closely held C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc. for about $400 million. The grocery distributor filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors after its biggest customer, Kmart Corp., ended a supply contract. Kmart represented about 20 percent of Fleming's revenue.

Sears to offer Lands' End at stores

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. >> Sears, Roebuck & Co. said it will begin offering items from its Lands' End Inc. unit at all Sears stores nationwide starting this month.

Lands' End products will now be available at 870 Sears stores, more than double the roughly 400 stores where the items had previously been offered, Sears said yesterday.

Lands' End, a leading catalog and Internet seller of clothing, makes apparel for men, women, and children as well as accessories, home goods, luggage, and corporate gifts.

Sears, the Hoffman Estates, Ill., department store chain that had revenue of $41 billion in 2002, purchased Lands' End in June 2002. It introduced Lands' End merchandise at 183 stores in 10 markets five months later, then expanded the number of stores by 217 this past March.

In other news ...

>> Health Management Associates Inc., an operator of acute-care hospitals, agreed to buy five southern hospitals from troubled hospital chain Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Tenet said yesterday that gross proceeds from the transactions will likely total $550 million.

>> Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, yesterday increased its sales forecast for August. Wal-Mart said it was expecting sales to increase by between 4 percent and 6 percent for the month. It had previously expected sales growth of 3 percent to 5 percent for August.

>> The New York attorney general's office concluded a settlement agreement with 10 investment banks, becoming one of the first states to reach terms with the banks over conflicts of interest in their research departments.