HAWAII

Go! to add 26 seasonal isle flights

Mesa Air Group's go! said yesterday it is adding 26 seasonal one-way flights to its regular interisland schedule due to increased passenger demand.

Go!, which typically offers up to 60 flights a day, said the additional flights are between Honolulu and Hilo, Kona, Kahului and Lihue and are available Tuesday through Dec. 30.

HawTel loans valued at 40.125 cents

Credit-default swap dealers set a value of 40.125 cents on the dollar for Hawaiian Telcom Communications Inc. bank loans to settle the derivatives after the company filed for bankruptcy protection this month.

The auction held among 10 dealers yesterday means sellers of default protection on the telephone service provider must pay about 59.9 cents on the dollar if they agreed to the terms of the auction. The value was reported on creditfixings.com, a Web site run by auction administrators Markit Group Ltd. and Creditex Group Inc.

Hawaiian Telcom was among about 100 companies in the LCDX loan credit swaps index. Credit-default swaps are used to hedge against losses on debt or to speculate on a company's creditworthiness.

State raises $125.2M in bond sale

The state has successfully completed its sale of $125.2 million of highway revenue bonds to fund various highway capital improvement projects throughout the state.

Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's Ratings Service and Fitch Ratings affirmed their ratings of the highway revenue bonds of Aa3, AA+ and AA-, respectively. The state received about $49 million in retail offers, many of which were from Hawaii residents.

The interest rate for the bonds was 5.45 percent.

“;Completion of the $125.2 million highways revenue bond sale today, along with the sale of $227.8 million in general obligation bonds earlier this month, will provide a portion of the initial funding for our $1.8 billion public infrastucture improvement plan announced on Monday,”; Gov. Linda Lingle said.

Target's hiring begins today

Target's four-day mass-hiring event kicks off today at the Hawaii Convention Center at 9 a.m.

The Minneapolis-based retailer is looking to hire up to 1,200 employees—from shift managers to stock clerks—for its two stores slated to open at Salt Lake and Kapolei in March.

The hiring event will be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, and continue with the same hours until Sunday.

Applicants should be able to find out within the same day whether or not they have been hired. New hires are expected to start work in mid-January.

Target also will hire up to 400 for its Kona store in May. The Big Island store is expected to open in July.

Kapolei Charities gets donation

Hawaii Self Storage of Kapolei has donated $2,600 to Kapolei Charities after raising the money during the Hawaii Self Storage Family Fun Festival that marked the locally owned storage company's fifth Oahu location.

The Kapolei facility is a three-story, 113,400-square-foot building with nearly 1,300 lockers ranging in size from 25 square feet to 200 square feet. The company also has other facilities in Mapunapuna, Pearl City, Kaimuki and Mililani.

NATION

U.S. tourism spending tumbles

ATLANTA » Spending on travel and tourism declined sharply in the third quarter, marking the largest drop since 2001, the U.S. government said yesterday.

Real spending on travel and tourism, which is spending adjusted for price changes, decreased at an annual rate of 8.1 percent in the third quarter, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

It was the largest decline since the fourth quarter of 2001, the agency said.

In the second quarter of this year, real spending grew 2.8 percent, which is a revised figure, the agency said. By comparison, real gross domestic product declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the third quarter based on preliminary figures, after growing 2.8 percent in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

Passenger air transportation led the downturn, decreasing 20.4 percent in the third quarter, after falling 18.7 percent in the second quarter. Real spending on international flights fell sharply after two quarters of strong demand; spending on domestic flights declined for the fourth consecutive quarter.

New hotel tax approved in S.F.

SAN FRANCISCO » Staying at a hotel in San Francisco will become a bit pricier next year.

City lawmakers voted Tuesday to levy a special hotel room tax to fund capital projects at Moscone Center and to help the visitor's and convention bureau market San Francisco as a travel destination.

The tax, scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, would add $3 to the cost of a $200 hotel room in the area around Moscone Center and $2 to the cost of a room elsewhere in the city.

As of August, the average nightly rate for a hotel in San Francisco was $186.51 with another $26 for the current hotel tax rate of 14 percent.

Mayor Gavin Newsom backed the new assessment, noting that tourism is San Francisco's top industry.

Morgan Stanley loses $2.37 billion

NEW YORK » Morgan Stanley said yesterday it lost $2.37 billion during its fiscal fourth quarter as it took a range of losses on assets amid one of the roughest quarters for investment banks.

The New York-based firm, which is aggressively building on its new status as a bank holding company, lost $2.34 per share for the quarter ended Nov. 30. It lost $3.61 billion, or $3.61 per share, during the year-ago period when it took a $9.4 billion write-down on mortgage-related assets as the housing crisis began to spiral downward.

PEOPLE

Judge approves settlement in AIG shareholder unit

Former American International Group Inc. Chairman Maurice “;Hank”; Greenberg and other AIG directors had a $115 million settlement approved yesterday by a Chancery Court judge in a shareholder lawsuit against the former insurance company executives.

The settlement was reached in September, just days before trial was to begin in a 2002 lawsuit challenging hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions paid by AIG to C.V. Starr & Co., a privately held affiliate controlled by former Greenberg and other AIG directors. The settlement was approved yesterday by Vice Chancellor Leo Strine Jr.

Attorneys representing the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana alleged that New York-based AIG could have done the work for which it paid Starr, and that the commissions were simply a mechanism for Greenberg and other Starr directors to line their pockets.