Posted on: Friday, December 27, 2002

Business briefs

HEI names chief financial officer

Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. appointed Eric K. Yeaman financial vice president, treasurer and chief financial officer effective Jan. 15. Yeaman is chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Kamehameha Schools.

New jobless claims drop

New claims for unemployment benefits plunged last week by the largest amount in more than a year, offering encouraging news for a job market that has stayed sluggish this year as companies cope with an uneven economic recovery. The Labor Department reported yesterday that new claims for jobless benefits fell by a seasonally adjusted 60,000 to 378,000 for the work week ending Dec. 21.

Japan fights bad bank loans

Japan pressured top banks yesterday to come clean on their biggest bad loans with tougher U.S.-style accounting, using persuasion rather than government decree in the fight to clear the bad loans crippling the financial system. The Financial Services Agency said it will "request" that the five biggest banks use discounted cash flow to assess their worst and largest nonperforming loans when they close their books for this fiscal year in March. Under this method, banks must assess the future cash flow a specific borrower is likely to generate.