Black Book executive biographies for Hawaii's top 250 companies.

Welcome to the seventh annual Top 250 Black Book edition of Hawaii Business magazine. Since 1997, the Black Book has been a valuable resource for Hawaii's business Community. It's a compilation of biographies of executives listed in the magazine's Top 250 August issue and other top Hawaii executives.

Although the Black Book comes out at the end of the year, the process begins in the summer. Biography forms were mailed out in August to more than 700 Hawaii executives whose names appeared in the Executive index of the Hawaii Business Top 250 ranking. This year, we received more than 330 biographies.

Whenever biography sheets were returned with missing information, we attempted to call the executives and secure the information. In compiling and "who's who," some errors will inevitably be made. We hope they are few and apologize for them. We also request that any reader discovering an error please notify us so we can correct it in next year's edition.

Besides executives from Hawaii Business Top 250 companies, we also invited biographies from a small number of other executives whose names do not appear in the Top 250 Executive Index, but without whom we felt our Black Book would be incomplete. These include the heads of various local chambers of commerce, and financial institutions.

Executives of companies that dropped out of the Top 250 rankings because of "sales below minimum" or "no current sales figure" may continue to have their biographies included in the Black Book at the sole discretion of the editors. Companies often return to the list in subsequent years when their sales rebound; or they decide to resume submitting current sales figures.

Executive biographies reflect titles and employment shown on returned forms as of the time the information was submitted. Executive changes occurring after this date (fall 2003) may or may not be reflected in the biographies.

Notes:

1) Executive title abbreviation key:

CHB = Chairman of the Board

PR = President

CEO = Chief Executive Officer

COO = Chief Operating Officer

CFO = Chief Financial Officer

CTO = Chief Technology Officer

CIO = Chief Information Officer

CEO = Chief Lending Officer

GM/Hawaii = General Manager/Hawaii Division

DIR = Director