Hawaiian Hijinks
A hostile takeover battle in Hawaii has devolved from high drama in the Honolulu business community to spirited lava-slinging.It all started April 17, with a conference call by Central Pacific Financial Corp., the $1.7 billion-asset parent of Central Pacific Bank, announcing a plan to take over CB Bancshares Inc.
Central Pacific's chairman, Clinton L. Arnoldus, suggested that the two would-be partners could sell their combination as an alternative to "foreign-owned, mainland-managed" banks, a reference to the two bigger banks in the islands - First Hawaiian Bank and Bank of Hawaii Corp.
"First Hawaiian, as you know, is now owned by a French parent, and that's not the most popular foreign ownership to have now, as you might imagine," Mr. Arnoldus said, referring to BNP Paribas, which in late 2001 bought the portion of BancWest Corp., First Hawaiian's parent, that it did not already own.
"Bank of Hawaii has taken a strategy of loading management with mainland imports and in the process has alienated the market, because they've sent the direct message … that mainland people are the ones that should be running this institution," he said.
His comments did not go unnoticed.
"Normally I don't comment on another bank's transactions, but it's kind of sad to see a malihini who's been in town for a year taking cheap shots at 2,000 local employees of our bank," First Hawaiian's chairman and chief executive, Walter A. Dods Jr., said in a press release. "I was born and raised here; I didn't just get off the boat from California and learn the shaka sign." (Malihini is Hawaiian for "newcomer." The shaka is a hand gesture meaning "hang loose.")
Mr. Arnoldus is in fact a malihini. He was born in Salt Lake City and has run banks in California, Nevada, and New Mexico. Before joining Central Pacific last year, he had never lived in Hawaii.
Michael E. O'Neill, Bank of Hawaii's chairman, used its annual shareholder meeting last week to poke fun at Mr. Arnoldus. He trotted out a series of executives with well-known Hawaiian roots - including Donna Tanoue, the former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairwoman and Hawaii financial institutions commissioner - but deliberately gave erroneous birthplaces in his introductions. For example, he told shareholders that Ms. Tanoue came from St. Louis; she was actually born in Hawaii and received her undergraduate degree there.
Mr. O'Neill, also a malihini, then took it a step further. He quipped that if Mr. Arnoldus ever needed a job, Iraq had an opening for a minister of information - referring to the highly imaginative Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf.
Wary of a backlash, executives there have begun to retrench.
"It's unfortunate Walter Dods took my comments so personally," Mr. Arnoldus said in a press release. "I certainly did not mean to say that the employees of First Hawaiian Bank are French and not local."
London Reentry
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. is returning to London.Until 1990 it shared an office there with Conning Corp. but shut it because rivals were constantly poaching staff.
The tables have turned. Keefe Bruyette said Wednesday that it had hired Mark Eccles-Williams from the London-based Kelton International Inc., where he was a senior sales representative.
Mr. Eccles-Williams will oversee Keefe Bruyette's team of brokers, who will initially focus on selling U.S. stocks to international clients. That strategy has proved successful for other U.S. banking boutiques, such as Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. Inc.
A London office will make it easier for the firm to expand its European client base, said John Duffy, Keefe Bruyette's chairman and chief executive.
Reconfiguring Asia
Bank of America Corp. combined its Japanese operations with those of the rest of Asia last week in its latest retrenchment in the region.The Charlotte company gave responsibility for Japan to its Singapore-based Asia president, Colm McCarthy. He takes over duties formerly handled by Yasukazu Aiuchi, who had been B of A's top executive in Japan but left after it cut 100 of its 200 employees there in February.
B of A's London-based international president, William Fall, said the changes would create more "cohesion" and improve business in Asia.
Mr. McCarthy, who has worked for the company since 1979 and has run its Asia operations since 2000, will continue to be based in Singapore.
