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[ FAST FACTS HAWAII ]

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[ HAWAII INC. ]

NEW JOBS

>> Auntie Pasto's has appointed Renny Kamark chef and kitchen manager. He has worked for the company for 15 years. He previously served as a Waikiki Seafood and Pasta sous chef and sautee cook.

>> First Hawaiian Bank has appointed Donna A. Kojima and Linda J. Vitrudes to personal banking officers. Kojima will be responsible for the Ward Branch. She first joined the company as an accounting clerk in 1984. Vitrudes will be responsible for the Main Banking Center. She has over 15 years of banking experience.

PROMOTIONS

>> Bank of Hawaii has promoted several personnel to vice presidents. Marie Ng Bostwick has been promoted to vice president and assistant manager of the appraisal/environmental risk management department. Lisa Morimoto has been promoted to risk management vice president. Nancy E.L. Murayama has been promoted to vice president and online educational tools and communication manager. Brent Ridenour has been promoted to vice president and asset management group portfolio analytics manager. Keith K. Shiroma has been promoted to vice president and branch sales manager. Shanae A. Souza has been promoted to mortgage banking division vice president and quality manger.

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HAWAII

It's official: Hawaiian is out of bankruptcy

Hawaiian Airlines, financially fitter than when it entered bankruptcy more than 26 months ago, made the transition out of reorganization today with company President Mark Dunkerley taking on the additional title of chief executive.

The changeover marks the end of Joshua Gotbaum's tenure as Hawaiian's trustee. Gotbaum was responsible for seeing the carrier through bankruptcy after former CEO John Adams was removed from office.

Hawaiian Airlines filed for Chapter 11 on March 21, 2003, but parent company Hawaiian Holdings Inc. never went into bankruptcy. Hawaiian Holdings' stock continues to trade on the American Stock Exchange.

NATION

United Air averts damaging strike

CHICAGO >> United Airlines secured two critical labor deals yesterday to remove the threat of a crippling strike during peak travel season, gaining a contract agreement in principle with its machinists union just hours after its mechanics voted to ratify a separate pact.

The wage and benefit concessions by the two employee groups should strongly boost United's quest to get out of bankruptcy, all but completing efforts to cut labor costs by a further $700 million annually.

No less important, the developments also came just in time to avoid a potentially strike-triggering ruling by a bankruptcy judge, who was set to issue an order annulling existing contracts and imposing pay and benefit cuts unilaterally had there been no agreement.

The machinists union had put its 20,000 baggage handlers, customer service representatives and other ground workers on notice to be prepared to walk off the job and shut down the nation's second-largest airline if its contract was broken. Barely two hours before the afternoon court session, an agreement was reached on the final sticking point -- a replacement pension plan -- and strike preparations were called off.

EU will countersue over subsidies

BRUSSELS, Belgium >> The European Union will countersue the United States at the World Trade Organization in the long-simmering dispute over government subsidies to their respective aircraft makers, the European trade commissioner said yesterday.

Months of efforts to settle the differences bilaterally all but evaporated late on Monday when the office of the U.S. trade representative said it would file a case against Europe for subsidizing Airbus, a rival of Boeing in passenger and cargo aircraft. Yesterday, the United States made good on that pledge.

Biotechs lost $6.4 billion last year

SAN FRANCISCO >> Since researchers first mixed together genes from two species more than a quarter century ago, biotechnology companies have promised to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry -- and even disrupt centuries of farming practices.

Despite that promise -- and some very significant breakthroughs in treating cancer, diabetes and other widespread and deadly diseases -- the industry's combined losses continued to mount in 2004.

The biotechnology industry lost a combined $6.4 billion last year, according to a new report from Ernst & Young. The industry's total accrued loss since its birth in Silicon Valley in the mid-1970s is more than $45 billion.

Shoppers naive about Web pricing, study says

WASHINGTON >> Most American consumers don't realize Internet merchants and even traditional retailers sometimes charge different prices to different customers for the same products, according to a new survey.

The study, "Open to Exploitation," found nearly two-thirds of adult Internet users believed incorrectly it was illegal to charge different people different prices, a practice retailers call "price customization." More than two-thirds of people surveyed also said they believed online travel sites are required by law to offer the lowest airline prices possible.

The study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania is the latest to cast doubt on the notion of sophisticated consumers in the digital age.

It said 87 percent of people strongly objected to the practice of online stores charging people different prices for the same products based on information collected about their shopping habits.

The Internet empowers careful shoppers to conveniently compare prices and features across thousands of stores. But it also enables businesses to quietly collect detailed records about a customer's behavior and preferences and set prices accordingly.

Changing prices is generally lawful unless doing so discriminates against a consumer's race or gender or violates antitrust or price-fixing laws.

Stores aggressively try to retain loyal customers who generate the highest sales while discouraging bargain-hunter shoppers who are less profitable and are known within the industry as "bottom feeders."