Isle satellite firm
retains Bear Stearns

Columbia Communications
will ask the investment banker
to help with its expansion plans

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Columbia Communications Corp., a privately owned Honolulu-based satellite communications company, has retained the international investment banking firm Bear Stearns & Co. as principal financial adviser.

The local company today said it has plans to expand and hired the Wall Street firm to help figure out how to finance those plans.

Columbia already leases telecommunications capacity aboard three NASA satellites which it resells to television, voice and data communications operators around the world.

In April, it will kick in a new chunk of capacity aboard a fourth satellite, owned by Intelsat and covering Central and South America and Africa. That satellite will double Columbia's capacity. The company's coverage already spans an area stretching from the Asia-Pacific region throughout North America to Africa and Europe, including all of Eastern Europe.

Clifford Laughton, Columbia's chairman and chief executive officer, said the local company will use the investment firm's insight and experience in telecommunications industry financing to guide its plans.

That expertise will "play a significant role in Columbia's transition from a relatively small, but successful, separate-systems satellite operator into a much broader-based telecommunications company," he said

Laughton declined to say what form that help might take but said Columbia, which he founded in Honolulu in 1983, has growth plans and needs top-notch advice on how to finance that growth.

The company, which is mostly owned by Laughton but also has some minority investors, has a handful of full-time employees at its offices in downtown Honolulu and Washington, D.C.