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[ HAWAII INC. ]

PROMOTIONS

>> First Hawaiian Bank has promoted Debbie Y. Pang to vice president of the treasury and investment division. She joined the company in 1984 as an international assistant in the international banking department, and has served as international officer, investment officer and assistant vice president. The company also promoted Rosemarie V. Cantoria to credit officer. She joined the company in 1994 as a senior credit investigator. Jennifer S. Kobayashi-Schiel was appointed to trust officer. She joined the company in 2003 as a trust administrator. She previously worked with Harrang Long Gary Rudnick. Chuen Ying Lee was appointed to trust officer. She joined the company in 2002 as a trust administrator. Jen-L Lyman was appointed to trust officer. She joined the company last year as a trust administrator and previously worked with Stirling & Kleintop.

>> Bank of Hawaii has promoted Brian Stewart to executive vice president and controller. He is responsible for the company's accounting functions. Previously, he served as controller for Pacific Century Bank N.A. and Frontier State Bank in California. The company has also expanded the responsibilities of Dean Shigemura, executive vice president and bank treasurer, to include corporate treasurer of the company. He is responsible for overseeing the company's investment portfolio and the management of interest rate risk, liquidity and capital in addition to the company's share repurchase program, balance sheet planning and foreign exchange and money market activities. He served as vice president and financial analyst for the Shidler Group prior to working for the company.

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NATION

Vague cliches doom resumes

You're thick in the middle of an aggressive job hunt, but your e-mail is bare and your telephone's not jangling by employers hot to talk.

Yet companies are hiring, jobs are returning. What's going on?

Well, check your resume. You might have some vague verbiage that just left a recruiter ice cold in the middle of summer.

In a study of more than 160,000 resumes, ResumeDoctor.com found that nearly half of job-hunters were irritatingly vague about their skills.

Apparently, we are a worker-nation of "team players" with "organizational skills" who are "driven" and "results-oriented." The trouble is, we often never tell a potential employer what we can really do or how we do it.

Nearly 13 percent of the resumes told a company the applicant has "communication skills," while more than 7 percent said the person was a "team player."

"Many job-seekers fail to realize that phrases like 'team player' and 'problem solver' have become vague cliches. On your resume, you actually need to state what team you played for and which problems you solved," said Brad Fredericks, a partner at the Vermont-based company.

Executives called overspecialized

American business is rife with chiefs -- you've heard of COOs and CIOs. But farther down the corporate food chain, our chiefdoms can get rather odd.

And all these chiefs come with potentially deleterious effect to organizations, contends David Silverstein, president and CEO of Breakthrough Management Group Inc., a Longmont, Colo.-based business consulting firm.

As costs and regulatory requirements have increased, an abundance of U.S. companies have turned to "niche executives" rather than train the full organization to manage such issues, Silverstein said.

For example, chief risk officers and chief ethics officers have proliferated in recent years. Is risk or ethical behavior a domain a business ought to specialize in such a manner? Silverstein argues no.

"Understanding risk is a core competency for every business manager," Silverstein said. "It is not a specialty, and to make it into one minimizes its importance."

Bosses are aware of shortcomings

Your boss might act infallible, driving you nuts.

But they make mistakes as supervisors, and most of them know it, according to a survey of 150 executives in finance, marketing and human resource departments.

The biggest problem area is in deficient communication -- a full fifth of the managers said they need to communicate more and to do it more effectively. Poor hiring decisions was cited by 13 percent.

"Managing people effectively requires offering support and making tough decisions, and few people are naturally adept at both," said Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps, a financial temp-staffing firm based in Menlo Park, Calif.

Enron exec's wife heads to prison

HOUSTON >> For the next year, home for the real estate and grocery heiress married to Enron's former finance chief will be an 8-by-10-foot cell. She'll live with a roommate, share a toilet and endure noise that doesn't stop at lights-out.

Today, Lea Fastow must report to the federal lockup in downtown Houston, where she will serve a year for her misdemeanor conviction of signing a fraudulent tax return to help her husband, Andrew, hide ill-gotten income from schemes that fueled the energy company's crash.

The family home is a $696,000, two-story brick home in the affluent Southampton neighborhood.

When Andrew Fastow pleaded guilty in January, he agreed to surrender $23.8 million in cash and property, including two vacation homes in Galveston and Vermont.

Tentative pact averts shipping strike in L.A.

LOS ANGELES >> Shipping line operators and clerical workers have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, averting a strike that could have shut down the nation's largest port complex.

Negotiators for 14 shipping lines and the 750-member office clerical unit of Local 63 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union reached the deal Friday night, officials said.

The deal gives clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach a no-layoff clause and a pay raise that increases starting wages to $37.50 from $33 an hour over three years. It also improves their retirement plans.

In exchange, the shipping lines can update their systems with new technology so customers have more efficient access to information needed to move products. New positions created by the technology would be unionized.

The union's members will vote on the proposal Thursday.

Gas price decline ends with rising cost of oil

CAMARILLO, Calif. >> A steady drop in gasoline prices leveled off after crude oil jumped in the last two weeks, an industry analyst said yesterday.

The weighted national average price for all grades of gasoline dipped about a penny to $1.96 per gallon between June 25 and Friday, said Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey. The survey polls nearly 8,000 gas stations across the United States.

The biggest seller, self-serve regular, averaged $1.93 a gallon.The highest price for self-serve regular among large U.S. cities was Honolulu at $2.25.

Gas prices have fallen 14 cents since May 21, when the average price peaked at slightly above $2.10 a gallon.

Lundberg said pump prices leveled off during the last two weeks because security concerns spurred a roughly $2-a-barrel jump in crude oil prices.