Guide to the black book. (2001 Hawaii business black book).

Welcome to the fifth 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, in addition to other top

Although the Black Book is published at the end of each year, the process begins in the summer. Biography forms were mailed out in August to more than 500 Hawaii executives whose names appeared in the Executive Index of the Hawaii Business Top 250 ranking. This year, we received more than 350 biographies.

Whenever biography sheets were returned with missing information, we attempted to call the executives and secure the information. Information for the "Special Biographical Notes" section (see below) following certain listings came from returned biographical forms, newspaper and magazine articles, and other available sources. In compiling any "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. Examples include the trustees of The Estate of Samuel Mills Damon; heads of selected major subsidiaries of Top 250 parent companies (e.g. American Savings Bank, an HEL company); and Sam Slom, president of Small Business Hawaii.

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 2001) may or may not be reflected in the biographies.

Notes:

1) "NA" can refer to a category of information not applicable to the executive (e.g. when an executive did not serve the military; or does not serve on a corporate board). It may also refer to information not included on the returned biography form. We continue to seek "unavailable" information and, if received, plan to include it in next year's revised edition.