BUSINESS BRIEFS
HawTel case moving to Honolulu
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Hawaiian Telcom Communications Inc.'s bankruptcy and related cases are being transferred from a bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Del., to Honolulu.
Judge Peter J. Walsh of the Wilmington bankruptcy court granted a motion moving the case to Hawai'i on Monday, noting it was in the best interest of the company, its creditors and others.
The company said requested the transfer earlier this month from Wilmington, where it filed for financial reorganization under bankruptcy laws on Dec. 1. The company is incorporated under Delaware laws.
But Hawaiian Telcom has its headquarters in Honolulu, where most of its about 1,400 employees work.
It filed for bankruptcy after failing to reach a deal with its creditors, including bondholders who could have demanded hundreds of millions of dollars from the company.
Hawaiian Telcom said it has about 524,000 residential and business customers, $1.4 billion in assets and $1.3 billion in debts in its bankruptcy filing.
STATE AMONG 'BEST' IN TRAVEL INDUSTRY
Readers of Travel Weekly, a national travel industry newspaper, have delivered Hawai'i's tourism industry an early Christmas present, giving it honors in the sixth annual Readers Choice Awards in New York.
Hawai'i took the prize for top state and Maui got the nod for best of Hawai'i on Dec. 11. And Pleasant Holidays, based in California, won the designation of top tour operator for Hawai'i.
The award winners, one for each of the 56 categories, represented the "best of the best of the travel industry." The nominees and award recipients were chosen in several rounds of voting by Travel Weekly's readers, a group of expert travel professionals.
The open ballot phase of the voting was conducted during the summer. Readers were invited to write in the names of any company they believed best exemplified that particular category. The leading vote recipients were identified as finalists, and voting on finalists took place through early November.
CENTRAL PACIFIC SHRINKS BOARD
The parent company of Central Pacific Bank is reducing the size of its board to a dozen directors, saying it wanted to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
Honolulu-based Central Pacific Financial Corp. said it will cut the number down from 14 currently at the end of the year when director Clayton Honbo retires because of the company age 70 board service limit.
The board already had one vacancy because of the retirement of Clint Arnoldus earlier this year.
SOUTHWEST GETS CLOSER TO ISLE FLIGHTS
Southwest Airlines has taken another step toward re-establishing a flight link to Hawai'i through a code-sharing arrangement with Canada-based WestJet Airlines.
The company has filed an application with the U.S. Department of Transportation for route authority between the U.S. and Canada, something it needs before it can fully implement the agreement with WestJet, which has flights to Hawai'i, Mexico and the Caribbean. Currently Southwest flies only in the lower 48 states.
Southwest passengers previously could book travel aboard it to Hawai'i through a code-sharing alliance with ATA airlines that allowed passengers to fly on ATA to Hawai'i. But that link was lost earlier this year when ATA went out of business.
Southwest and WestJet plan to announce code-share flight schedules in the second half of 2009.
