Yesterday’s posting about Hawaiian Telcom financial reports coincided with the company’s announcement that it was hiring Hawaiian Electric Co. executive Eric Yeaman as its new chief executive officer.
Rumors of a new CEO had been on the street for a while. After all, the company’s chief executive, turnaround expert Stephen Cooper, was expected to leave once he completed his restructuring of the company.
Most of my phone company contacts had assumed that Hawaiian Telcom’s owner, Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle Group, was going to tap a Mainland telco executive and not a local manager.
Yeaman, a native of Kona, previously served as Hawaiian Electric Co.’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer of HECO’s parent, Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. From 2000 to 2003, he served as Kamehameha School’s chief financial officer.
But Yeaman is no stranger to Hawaiian Telcom. When he started his career in the late 1980s with Arthur Andersen’s local office, the local phone company was one of Yeaman’s first clients.
It was at Arthur Anderson where the Big Island native first began to attract public notice. In 1998, he was part of the audit team that reviewed the operations of the massive Bishop Estate and the dysfunctional management practices of its $1 million-a-year trustees.
The 336-page Arthur Andersen report, which concluded that the former Bishop Estate trustees hoarded $350 million in income that should have been spent on educating Hawaiian children, served as a basis for efforts to remove the trust’s board.
To be sure, Yeaman and his management team face huge challenges. But if his experience at Arthur Andersen and Bishop Estate is any gauge, don’t be surprised to see some tough decisions being made at the local phone company.
Speaking of CEO changes, Central Pacific Financial Corp. has hired the national executive search firm of Heidrick & Struggles to look for Chief Executive Officer Clint Arnoldus’ successor. Arnoldus, is retiring at the end of the year, recently said that the firm is screening prospects and will begin interviewing candidates soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 8:53 am and is filed under Biz Bites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.