President-elect Barack Obama has named former Hawaiian Airlines bankruptcy trustee Joshua Gotbaum as one of two leaders to head up the Treasury transition team.

Gotbaum, who successfully brought Hawaiian Airlines through a 26-month bankruptcy, was named yesterday along with Michael Warren, chief operating officer of advisory firm Stonebridge International.

Both are expected to oversee the new administration's takeover of the Treasury Department as it manages the still-evolving $700 billion financial rescue plan.

Gotbaum, 57, brought Hawaiian out of Chapter 11 reorganization in June 2005 after collaborating with San Diego-based RC Aviation LLC on a reorganization plan. Hawaiian's emergence from bankruptcy was notable because the company was able to fully repay creditors, and the value of the stock was not wiped out as it typically is in Chapter 11 cases.

He was appointed trustee in July 2003 to replace Hawaiian Airlines trustee John Monahan, who resigned after three weeks on the job for personal reasons. Monahan is now president and chief executive of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.

However, a few months after the company exited bankruptcy, Gotbaum rankled the company and its labor unions, who had made contract concessions, when he asked the court for an $8 million success fee on top of the nearly $1.2 million he received in salary for his two years as trustee. Bankruptcy Judge Lloyd Faris ultimately reduced the $8 million request to $250,000.

A trustee had been needed to oversee Hawaiian through bankruptcy after Faris ousted former CEO John Adams in May 2003. Faris ruled that Adams had placed the interests of the shareholders ahead of those of the creditors with an ill-timed $25 million stock tender offer in 2002 that enriched Adams and his affiliates when Hawaiian was recovering from the effects of Sept. 11, 2001.

Gotbaum, son of New York labor leader Victor Gotbaum, worked briefly in the Carter administration before becoming a protege of the investment banker Felix G. Rohatyn at Lazard Freres & Co., where he spent 13 years. At Lazard he provided advice to airlines on mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies and restructuring—from the likes of Pan American to British Airways and Air France.

Before taking the Hawaiian position, Gotbaum was the first CEO of the September 11th Fund, a $500 million-plus charity formed after the 2001 tragedy.

From 1994 through 2001, he worked in the Clinton administration as controller in the Office of Management and Budget, assistant secretary of Treasury for Economic Policy and assistant secretary for economic security in the Department of Defense.

Gotbaum received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and his joint law and Master of Public Policy degrees from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

After pulling Hawaiian out of bankruptcy, Gotbaum returned to his former residence in Washington, D.C.

In 2006 he was recruited by Blue Wolf Capital Management of New York as an operating partner to help restructure Platform Learning Inc., a bankrupt company offering tutoring services to public school students under the No Child Left Behind Act.