Q. Bank of Hawaii turned in strong financial results for the first quarter. What's the outlook for the current period?

A. We feel good about where we're heading. There's a fair amount of choppiness out there in the economy, both nationally and increasingly we're seeing locally. As a matter of policy we don't provide guidance, but I think it'll be safe to say we're cautiously optimistic.

Q. Was the 21 percent rise in first-quarter earnings anticipated, or did it come as a surprise?

A. It was expected. We had been working on a couple of transactions that occurred during the quarter that helped our bottom line, but were in fact one-time events. We are an owner in Visa and Visa went public during the quarter, which was a nice windfall for us. We also had a jet, a 747 that we had a lease-financing piece for many, many years. That had a buyout provision, which the company elected in doing and resulted in a gain for us. Those were one-time pieces that positively impacted the quarter. But the quarter as a whole just from a day-to-day operational standpoint was quite positive as well.

Q. In times when the economy is having problems, how do you and the bank adjust?

A. Really we try not to change our approach to the marketplace, depending on which part of the cycle we're in. What we try to do is make sure that our underwriting policies, our loan approval polices and processes, are robust to begin with and work both in upcycles as well as downcycles. As times get tougher it's important for us to make sure that we're communicating with our client staff to make sure that we're helping people make the right decisions out there.

Q. You've been with the bank for about 15 years and were named president April 25. What are your new responsibilities?

A. My role is to work with Al (Landon), our chairman and CEO, in what we call our primary revenue operations. Our organization is split into three businesses. We have retail banking. We have our commercial bank, which is lending to businesses and corporations, and doing banking services for businesses and corporations primarily here in the state. Our third business is what we call our investment services group and that business is investment management and trust services for families as well as for individuals and companies. My job is to oversee all three of those businesses. We made that change in September 2007 so it's been six-plus months at this point where we've really tried to coordinate and consolidate all of our various client businesses under a single leader, being my role. The president's role is a furthering of that endeavor. So from a responsibility standpoint, not too much in the way of change, but the title change speaks to more a confidence in this kind of direction that we want to head in.

Q. Is it tough to balance everything that you do?

A. It's a tough thing to do because we're a community-based organization so there's always that opportunity to be delving deeper into the community. There's always that opportunity to being out with clients, being out with our customer-facing staff in the marketplace and that takes a good amount of time. Then there's the other responsibility of running the bank on a day-to-day basis and then you put family on top of that and that's a pretty full day.

Q. You come from a line of successful business people. Your grandfather was Chinn Ho and your father Stuart Ho. Has business always been in your blood?

A. It's something that I grew up with. My grandfather was a self-made man, a great real estate guy, a great finance guy. I remember growing up, my father joining him in the business. So growing up for me was very much business-oriented. A lot of our family dinners were kind of family/business/client dinners. It was kind of a natural thing for me.

Q. There was no pressure on you to get into the business world?

A. It was certainly something that I was used to doing.

Q. Any thoughts while growing up of doing something totally different? Like be a ballplayer?

A. Sports was an easy one because I wasn't that great an athlete. That kind of took care of itself. Not that my family or my parents really ever tried to steer me in one direction over another. But familiarity is a pretty powerful thing, so when the opportunity to get into banking and business presented itself after college, it was something that I naturally gravitated to.

Q. You must have learned a lot from your grandfather and father.

A. A tremendous amount. For the people who knew my grandfather, he was a tremendous relationship guy. Business relationships were personal relationships for him. I remember we used to have dinner every Sunday night so the family would get together and almost invariably there would be a couple or three clients or consultants or bankers or what have you. To him, business was personal and it was all about the relationship, and business came out on a secondary basis as a result of the relationship. So you take that in combination with my father, he carried on with the notion that you're really only as good as your dealings with people here. That stuck with me. It's important in doing business in general. It's especially important to doing business in a small community like Hawai'i. It's still in my mind the key to success in business.

Q. That must make it important to get involved in community activities?

A. Yes. I'm a trustee of Hawai'i Pacific University. I'm on the board of the American Red Cross. I'm active with The Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i, the Rehab Hospital Foundation, and a number of foundations that I sit on as a result of our responsibilities with the trust company.

Q. You have time for all of this?

A. You just find the time. There are 24 hours in a day. The important thing is that you create balance and at any given time something is going to take precedent, there's no question. But you have to make sure that in the end, in the final analysis, you've had adequate commitment and time to things that are important. Obviously, professionally there are a ton of things that are important there, but when it comes to family, there's nothing really that trumps family. You just figure out how to make it work.

Q. Is there added pressure being from the Ho family?

A. I've been very fortunate. Both my parents really grilled into each of us, my two sisters included, the need to be an individual and the need to really find your own path in life. There really was no expectation for me to go into the family business at all. There was no expectation for me to "be successful" or not. It was really more of an approach that, "You need to figure out what you're going to be happy with and what you potentially could be good at and that's probably your best course."