In what could be a local adaptation of a Horatio Alger novel, Central Pacific Financial Corp. on Thursday named Arnold Martines — who grew up in the tiny Big Island town of Paauilo — to be the next chief executive officer of the state’s fourth-largest bank.
Martines, 58, who less than a year ago was promoted to president and chief operating officer, will take over as the fourth CEO within eight years at the company when he assumes the post for Paul Yonamine, 65, who is retiring at the end of December. Yonamine will become chairman emeritus of both the holding company and Central Pacific Bank. Martines will retain the president title for both entities.
Former CEO Catherine Ngo, 61, vice chair of both the holding company and the bank, will become chair of both entities. She will continue as president of the CPB Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Central Pacific Bank.
The new appointments will be effective Jan. 1.
“I’m very humbled,” Martines said in a phone interview. “I feel a heavy burden on my shoulders because I know that I’m now responsible for a lot of people that depend on my decision and the executive team’s decisions for their success, not just for their personal success, but for their family’s success in the future. And, certainly, exceeding customers’ expectations is also weighing on me and ensuring we continue to do our best for our customers and the broader community.”
Martines, who was born and raised in Paauilo, attended Honokaa High School and the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is a graduate of the Pacific Coast Banking School.
He started his banking career in 1995 as an assistant branch manager at Bank of Hawaii and joined Central Pacific in February 2004 as vice president and portfolio management approval manager before working his way up the ranks.
Alger was a 19th-century American author best known for his rags-to-riches juvenile novels about boys who rose from humble backgrounds to middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage and honesty.
Martines also came from humble beginnings.
His father died when Martines was very young, and his mother had to raise Martines and his six siblings. The town of Paauilo, which then had a population of about 2,000, was dealt a devastating economic blow when sugar operations there shut down when Martines was completing high school.
“I certainly have a lot of aloha for my mom because she was a single parent raising me and my siblings after my dad passed away,” Martines said. “In fact, my mom went back to school. She was a homemaker at that time, and she went back to school to earn a degree and ultimately became a preschool teacher and spent some time in that occupation to help support the family financially.”
The early struggles helped Martines gain a perspective on life that he carries today.
“I think I’m here because of where I came from,” he said. “The values that I learned, the community being a village. … When I look back at attending Paauilo School, my class was about 20, 21 people, and we were together from kindergarten to ninth grade before we went off to the bigger school in Honokaa. So you can imagine those relationships to this day are very strong between me and my Paauilo classmates even though we don’t see each other often.
“Those times that we were together was very important, and I would say being able to experience that has grounded me in my career and has made me understand that values and culture are important in leading an organization. It’s just not the business side of it. It’s the people side of it, and the importance of bringing people together, empowering people and creating success with a foundation of strong values.”
Yonamine, the son of Hawaii and Japan baseball great Wally Yonamine, had been a board member of Central Pacific Financial and the bank before he was named chairman and CEO of both in September 2018.
Under his leadership and with Martines’ assistance, Central Pacific launched RISE 2020, a renovation and rebranding program that invested $40 million in the bank’s branches, ATMs and digital platforms, as well as the redevelopment of Central Pacific Plaza, the bank’s landmark building in downtown Honolulu.
Yonamine said he wants “more flexibility” in his life and wants to visit his children in California more often and spend more time in Japan in connection with his role on three boards in that country.
“As part of that, I want to help Arnold and (Chief Financial Officer) David (Morimoto) really grow their Japan book,” Yonamine said. “More importantly, a really important aspect of any CEO is to address succession. Arnold is almost eight years younger than me, and that gives him a lot more runway than I do. And this institution is so important to me personally but also to our community.
“When I took on this job, I did reflect on what it meant originally to the Japanese American community, and now it’s for everybody in Hawaii. But it’s really a special place for the people who founded this institution, including Sen. (Daniel) Inouye. Before I took on the job, I actually reached out to his wife, Irene, and asked her for permission to become CEO of this place. And she told me that Dan would be very happy. I took that on as a lot of pressure to produce, and I think we made a lot of progress.”
Yonamine said he’s now stepping aside with the bank in good hands.
“I’m at a point where I could say earlier this year that I felt that with Arnold as the CEO and David Morimoto as the CFO that this bank is going to be not just in good hands, but better hands,”he said. “They’re younger, they’re ambitious, they’re going to be passionate about growth and they have very deep local roots. They care about the community, and it was part of my instinct as a businessman for over 40 years that this is the right time to pass on the leadership. It will be in good hands, and they’ll continue to make it even better.”
