---

BACK TO TOP
|

New computer system for courts

Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services Inc., the world's largest processor of student-loan payments, said it has won a $12 million contract to create an information management system for all Hawaii state courts.

The Hawaii court system uses 11 antiquated, disparate systems that serve different courts and can't share data. The new system will be integrated and provide better online access to public court information, and allow electronic document filings and citation payments, ACS said.

ACS will use two Hawaii companies, Commercial Data Systems Inc. and Century Computers Inc., as subcontractors. ACS, a $6.7 billion public corporation, will provide software and services, training and installation, data conversion and project management services.

The project is to start this year, with the first phase to be done in 15 months and the remaining phases to take seven years.

Panel to discuss venture capital

A panel of Silicon Valley venture capitalists will hold a discussion Nov. 6 on how local companies can get funding, part of the "Kipapa i ke Ala" lecture series sponsored by the University of Hawaii College of Business Administration.

Titled "Venture Capital Today: The Requirements for Getting Funded," the lecture will take place at the UH School of Architecture Auditorium.

For more information call 956-5083 or visit www.cba.hawaii.edu/kipapa.in hawaii.

SEC investigates Wilshire trades

Wilshire Associates Inc. said the Securities and Exchange Commission is examining short-term mutual fund trades the company made during the past 10 years, prompting concern among clients, including the $147 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System.

The SEC is reviewing investments Santa Monica, Calif.- based Wilshire made for its clients and its own accounts that involved buying stock index mutual funds to profit from discrepancies in futures contract prices, the company said in an e-mailed statement.

"If they had long-term investors in the same mutual funds where they were employing this strategy, those investors could have been harmed," said David Marder, a former SEC attorney who now works at the law firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi in Boston. "That raises the question of whether Wilshire violated its fiduciary duty."

The examination comes as New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the SEC investigate alleged improper trading at mutual fund companies, banks and hedge funds.

Thomas Lee to buy Michael Foods

Thomas H. Lee Partners, the world's second-biggest buyout firm by assets, agreed to buy Michael Foods Inc., the maker of Better 'N Eggs, All Whites and Simply Potatoes food products, for about $1.05 billion.

The current owners of Michael Foods, which is based in Minnetonka, Minn., include the founding family and private equity firms Vestar Capital Partners and Goldner Hawn Johnson & Morrison. Senior executives such as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gregg Ostrander also have a stake in the food company, which they took private in April 2001 for about $800 million.

Michael Foods is tapping consumers' demand for prepared foods by making refrigerated egg, potato and dairy products and distributing them to grocers and food-service firms, Thomas Lee managing director Anthony DiNovi said.

UAW membership may hit 60-year low

The United Auto Workers' decision to accept job cuts in exchange for health-care benefits in last month's labor agreement may extend a membership slide that would reduce the union's ranks to the lowest in 61 years.

The four-year accord with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit will close eight plants, cutting as many as 50,000 jobs by 2007, Goldman Sachs analyst Gary Lapidus estimated in a report. That would lower UAW membership below 600,000 for the first time since 1942, and from a 1979 peak of 1.5 million.

The success of Asian automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp. at winning market share has taken a toll on the union's ability to confront the Detroit-based automakers.