First Hawaiian’s Dods
stays honed in on ‘local’
Kicking off a speech with a comment in pidgin that was an obvious reference to recent arguments over who is "local" among Hawaii's banks, BancWest Corp. chief Walter A. Dods Jr. yesterday accepted an award for a deal that made one of Hawaii's oldest banks part of an international banking giant.
He received the "Deal of the Year" honor from the Hawaii chapter of Financial Executives International, for the series of deals that merged First Hawaiian Bank with Bank of the West into BancWest in 1998 and then, late in December 2001, made them all wholly owned units of BNP Paribas, based in Paris.
That $2.5 billion deal was the biggest in history involving a Hawaii company, Dods said, and it was followed a a few months later, in 2002, with the $2.4 billion deal by BancWest to buy United California Bank.
The real deal, Dods said, was turning $700 million in equity into $2.5 billion in a process that helped lift the Hawaii part, First Hawaiian Bank, from a "weak second place four years ago" to top place in Hawaii.
"First Hawaiian alone is the most profitable Hawaiian company," Dods said. First Hawaiian Bank had a net profit of $35 million in the first quarter of this year. BancWest had reported a first-quarter net of $102 million, including the mainland businesses.
After introducing about a dozen top First Hawaiian executives, many of them born in Hawaii and with many years of local experience with the bank, Dods said "no single employee lost his job because of the merger," although there have been layoffs in the normal course of business, and "local management is the same."
Recognizing that the $15,000 or so raised by the annual luncheon was for a charity, to fund scholarships for students of finance, Dods announced a First Hawaiian donation of $15,000 to the fund, and marked it by the ceremonial handover of a giant replica of the check.
In his "local" comment at the start, a reference to barbs swapped by the heads of Central Pacific Bank and City Bank in their ongoing takeover fight, Dods acknowledged an electronic on-screen introduction, and got laughs with this comment about former Miss America Angela Perez Baraquio, who did the introducing: "I don't know about you buggahs, but I can tell you that wahine much better looking than one kane."