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[ HAWAII INC. ]

PROMOTIONS

>> Kalu Glass Co. has appointed Carl Seyfer to chairman of the board and Al Linton to president/CEO and corporate board member. Seyfer developed Wildcat Management, which owns Kalu Glass, in 1971. Linton previously served as vice president of the company. He joined the company in 2002 after relocating to Hawaii from Guam.

>> MW Group Ltd. has promoted Eileen Bereki to property manager of the Kihei Kalama Village. She previously served as assistant property manager for the company.

>> Verizon promoted Oscar Libed to customer operations and construction manager for the Big Island. He most recently served as an operations manager with Time Warner Telecom. He replaces Dwayne Miyashiro who will retire from the company.

>> Hawaii Modular Space Inc. has promoted Guy Murakami to sales manager. He will be responsible for finding and developing sales associates. He previously worked for American Fence as a project manager for four years.

>> Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties has promoted Gerry Tomonari to senior vice president, development. She will oversee human resources and staff development, internal launch of new initiatives, policy development, quality and process enhancement and developing new business opportunities. She was previously company operations vice president.

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HAWAII

Hawaiian Dredging to build high-rise

Hawaiian Dredging and Construction Co. has been selected as the general contractor for the Moana Pacific high-rise residential condominiums on Kapiolani Boulevard.

The project's developer KC Rainbow Development Co. said it had been holding off construction until it gauged demand for the project's condos but decided to go ahead after the recent overwhelming response from buyers.

The Moana Pacific's 353-unit West Tower sold out in just seven weeks. KC Rainbow is now accepting owner-occupant applications for a lottery next Tuesday that will select buyers of units in the project's East Tower.

Project manager Alan Leong of KC Rainbow said construction of the West Tower will begin in September and the second tower should break ground two to four months later.

Hawaiian Dredging also is building another Kakaako condo project, Koolani.

Credit union awards scholarships

The Hawaii State Federal Credit Union has awarded $29,000 worth of scholarships to 23 recipients as part of its annual program to help its members defray higher education costs.

The credit union awarded scholarships of $1,000, $1,500 and $2,000. The $2,000 scholarship winners were Chevelle Acosta, Gary Nakamura, Christina Sing, and Mahina Yahiro, all of Honolulu.

Applications are judged based on academic merit, financial need and each applicant's involvement in community service.

NATION

United's 2nd application rejected

A federal loan board rejected United Airlines' application for $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees yesterday, saying that it thought the airline could survive on its own without government help.

United, the nation's second-largest airline, was the last to apply for a loan guarantee under a $10 billion program established by Congress to aid the airline industry after the September 2001 attacks. It has been operating normally under bankruptcy protection, and the board's decision was not expected to have any immediate impact on travelers or the airline's employees.

But United's plans for emerging from bankruptcy depended heavily on winning the loan guarantees, and the board's decision was a major setback. It now faces the daunting task of winning more concessions from its 67,000 workers and finding new financing on its own.

The rejection was the second in 18 months for United, which is based outside Chicago. The Air Transportation Stabilization Board rejected United's first request, for $1.8 billion in loan guarantees, in December 2002. That action sent the airline into bankruptcy.

This time, United sought a smaller package, hoping to use the loan guarantees as the centerpiece of a restructuring plan. And it enlisted a powerful ally -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. -- to lobby persistently on its behalf.

Still, the three-member loan board denied its application on a 2-0 vote. The representatives of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve voted no; the Transportation Department representative abstained.

Though the deadline for new applications is long past, the loan board held out a ray of hope for United, saying it could come back yet again with a third application.

1 in 4 credit reports has serious errors

WASHINGTON >> One in four credit reports has errors that are serious enough to disqualify consumers from buying a home, opening a bank account or getting a job -- and an overwhelming majority contain mistakes of some kind, according to a survey released yesterday by a consumer group.

Serious errors found in the credit profiles maintained on some 90 percent of American adults include consumer accounts incorrectly listed as delinquent or in collection or that actually belong to another person, said the report by Public Interest Research Group.

Of the 197 credit reports collected from people in 30 states, 79 percent had some sort of error, while 54 percent included personal identifying information that was misspelled, outdated, belonged to someone else or was otherwise incorrect. Thirty percent contained credit accounts that consumers had closed but that remained listed as open. Nearly 8 percent were missing major credit, loan or mortgage accounts that indicate creditworthiness, PIRG said.

ADM to pay $400M in price-fixing case

Closing a final chapter on a nine-year scandal, the Archer Daniels Midland Co. has agreed to pay $400 million to settle a civil class-action lawsuit accusing the company of fixing prices in the huge corn sweeteners market, people involved in the case said yesterday.

The settlement, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois late yesterday, is one of the largest ever by a single defendant in an antitrust suit. The money will go to an array of corporate purchasers of the sweetener known as high-fructose corn syrup, including soft drink giants.