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First Hawaiian’s Don Horner fell in love with Hawaii during his four years in the Navy and when he got out in 1976 he decided to move here, without a job prospect.
next leader rose
through the ranks
Don Horner is likely to take over
after Walter A. Dods retiresBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
"I figured I'd probably end up driving a Charley's cab," Horner said. But he bought a one-way ticket anyway and wound up landing a job with the local Merrill Lynch office.
He's a long way from those risky days now, as the chosen successor to Walter A. Dods Jr. to be chairman and CEO of First Hawaiian Bank, the Hawaii-Guam-Saipan subsidiary of BancWest Corp. BancWest, in turn, is a subsidiary of Paris-based banking giant BNP Paribas.
Dods, 60, says he won't be leaving any time soon and still has nearly three years to go in his contract as chairman and chief executive of First Hawaiian and BancWest Corp. But it's time to make it clear what the management structure at the local bank will be like when he does go, Dods said in a Feb. 1 letter to employees.
Horner is the man for the top job, Dods said, calling him "an outstanding banker and leader."
Horner said he has had some good teachers since he joined First Hawaiian in 1978, with invaluable on-the-job training from Dods and John Bellinger, who was chairman and chief executive when he died in 1989.
And Horner had a good business education to start with -- an bachelor's degree in business from the University of North Carolina and a master's in business administration from the University of Southern California. Later, he also went to the prestigious Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington, where he graduated with honors.
When he joined First Hawaiian he was a credit analyst but over the years gained experience at a number of First Hawaiian subsidiaries and moved up through the ranks.
Now he is vice chairman of the bank at age 50, helping to run a bank with $8.7 billion in assets.
He heads First Hawaiian's retail banking group and is responsible for all consumer and business banking in Hawaii, Guam and Saipan, including the network of 60 branches.
Horner says that for all the technical advances and new conveniences for customers, the basics of banking haven't changed.
He reached across a table in his 29th floor office in First Hawaiian Center to shake a reporter's hand, saying deals are still made on a handshake and a lot of loans are given on the basis of a gut assessment of what sort of a borrower the person is.
Of course it is more sophisticated than that, but he said the "Five Cs" he was taught in banking school still apply -- character, capacity (to repay the loan), capital (the applicant's net worth), conditions and collateral. He deliberately listed collateral in last position because the others are more important.
"Character is the person's willingness to pay," Horner said.
A lot of the factors have to do with what is going on in the community, such as the current economic conditions and the customer's standing in the community.
"We are a community bank. Heaven help us if we're not," he said.
French-based BNP Paribas, a giant banking concern that now owns all of First Hawaiian's parent BancWest Corp., won't change that, he said. "They are an investor," whose best interests lie in letting the bank do what it does best, run a clean, stable, profitable operation in the community.
Horner is a big believer in the community himself. Despite his work load, he finds time to be an elder and trustee of First Presbyterian Church and to play an active role on the boards of a number of other community organizations. He is vice chairman and treasurer of the Bishop Museum board, for example. He is treasurer of Kuakini Medical Center's board and chairman of its development subsidiary.
He also works with the Blood Bank of Hawaii, Big Brothers & Sisters, Mid-Pacific Institute, Manoa Valley Theatre and a number of others.
And there is his own family, high on the list -- his wife Rowena, a registered nurse originally from Kauai, and two sons, Matthew Ryan, age 9, and Alexander Luke, age 5. Horner coaches his younger son's soccer team, the Tiger Sharks, and says he gets a real boost out of watching the youngsters develop.
Asked how he sets his priorities, Horner answers: "Faith, family and job, in that order."
Horner does go it alone in one respect. He likes to paddle one-man ocean kayaks.
Dods said in his letter to employees that Horner is already being given additional responsibilities with succession in mind and Horner created the new retail banking organizational structure to handle them, but Dods isn't calling it quits yet.
He said he, Jack Tsui, vice chairman of BancWest and president of First Hawaiian Bank; and Howard Karr, executive vice president of BancWest and vice chairman of the administration and finance group of First Hawaiian, will be around to assist and guide Horner.
"I'm not leaving any time soon. I have no idea when I'll feel the call of retirement," Dods said. "I turned 60 past year, but I'm not ready for a full-time golf career yet."