One of Hawaii’s oldest and biggest banks is headed for a leadership change on
April 1 under a succession plan being publicly announced today.

Bank of Hawaii Corp. CEO Peter Ho is set to hand off the chief executive role at the 128-year-old financial institution to company President and Chief Banking Officer James Polk.

Ho, who joined the bank in 1993 and has been CEO and board chair since 2010, is retiring after serving as the third-longest tenured CEO at the company and the longest in 71 years.

The 60-year-old Ho said 16 years is a long time to be the chief executive of a company with public shareholders, and that the time for a change at the top of the company was right because the bank is in great financial shape and has a well-groomed executive ready to step in.

“To serve as CEO at Bank of Hawaii has been the greatest honor of my professional life,” Ho said in a statement. “I’ll depart confident that Bank of Hawaii is in exceptional hands under Jim’s leadership.”

Polk, 59, has been at Bankoh since 1999, and like Ho is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He was unanimously selected by the bank’s 12-member board to succeed Ho as CEO, and will remain company president.

As part of the leadership change, Polk will join the company’s board of directors while one current independent director, Hawai‘i Pacific Health President Ray Vara Jr., will succeed Ho as Bankoh board chair.

Vara, in a statement on behalf of the bank’s board, expressed deep gratitude to Ho for what Vara described as decades of unwavering leadership and dedication.

“His remarkable career, spanning more than 30 years, has been defined by progressive roles that strengthened the company and a steadfast commitment to community causes that have touched countless lives,” Vara said about Ho.

Vara also welcomed Polk as the bank’s 16th CEO since it was founded in 1897, and said Polk’s experience will be invaluable for continued success at the bank, which at the end of 2025 had assets totaling $24.2 billion, including $21.2 billion in deposits, and reported a 2025 profit of
$206 million, up 37% from $150 million in 2024.

“He brings a strong foundation of continuity and strategic execution, coupled with deep institutional knowledge of the bank as well as the business landscape here in Hawaii,” Vara said about Polk.

Ho, born and raised in Hawaii, began his banking career in 1987 at Manufacturers Hanover, a bank holding company in New York.

In 1993, Ho returned home where he was hired as an assistant vice president in commercial banking at Bankoh. He later ascended through management ranks that included becoming the company’s youngest senior vice president in 1999, overseeing corporate banking.

After holding various vice president positions in other areas of bank operations, Ho became chief banking officer in 2006 and then president in 2008.

In addition to leading growth and modernization of the bank, Ho was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for two consecutive terms from 2013 to 2018, and serves on the boards of numerous Hawaii nonprofits.

In 2024, Ho received
$4.3 million in total compensation at Bankoh, including $885,800 in base salary, a
$1.5 million performance-­based award and company stock awards valued at
$1.8 million, according to a report the company filed in March 2025.

Ho plans to serve as a consultant to the bank following his retirement through the end of 2027, and also said he intends to remain engaged with assisting nonprofits, government and businesses locally.

Polk, since joining Bankoh in 1999, has overseen parts of the business including commercial banking, retail lending, deposits, mortgage banking and the bank’s West Pacific region. In 2021, Polk became chief banking officer, and then was named president in 2024. His total compensation in 2024 was about $1.6 million.

“I’m deeply grateful to assume the role of CEO in April, and I’m immensely appreciative of the trust placed in me by Peter and the board,” Polk said in a statement. “I look forward to building upon the strategy that has served this company well for decades, and driving forward a culture of innovation, trust and commitment to the communities who rely upon us.”

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi proclaimed February as Black History Month in the City and County of Honolulu Monday.

A ceremony took place at the University of Hawaii at Manoa to recognize the lasting contributions, perseverance, and leadership of Black Americans in Hawaii and across the nation.

The ceremony was held at Andrews Outdoor Theatre, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech on the topic “Progress Toward Desegregation” in 1964.

“Black presence on the islands dates back to more than 200 years ago. Black sailors, craftsmen, cowboys, educators, and spiritual leaders arrived on these islands long before Hawaii became a U.S. state,” said Danielle Wills, executive director, Hawaii Black Chamber of Commerce.

This year marks 100 years since the first national observance of Black history.

“One hundred years later, we’re still here telling stories not because they’re new, but because they’re necessary,” Wills said.

“We know what it looks like when power decides that a people’s voice is inconvenient. Black history and Hawaiian history are not the same, but they rhyme,” said Ken Lawson, co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. “When you erase history of resistance, you don’t erase the oppression. You just make it easier to repeat. That is why Black History Month matters, not as a celebration of the past, but as a defense of the future.”

As part of Black History Month, the Honolulu African American Film Festival returns to the Honolulu Museum of Art.

Films that celebrate the Black experience will be shown Feb. 5 through March 1.

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The two-lined spittlebug arrived on Hawaii island in 2016.

The tiny black bug is about one centimeter long with two blood-orange stripes across its body and red legs. It’s a leaf hopper that feeds on grass through its entire life cycle, which is typically around 60 days.

Now, 10 years later, it has destroyed an estimated 320,000 acres of ranchlands from Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a to South Point.

“It has grown tremendously,” said Mark Thorne, a range and livestock extension specialist with the University of
Hawaii.

Thorne has led research on the pest’s impact on the island since its arrival. He said if nothing is done and the pest moves north into Waimea, where the state’s largest livestock production resides, “we stand to potentially lose our best cattle production ranchlands and that entire industry.”

The threat to the cattle industry prompted Sen. Mike Gabbard, D Kapolei-Makakilo-­Kalaeloa, to introduce SB 2321, which would create a two-year response pilot program within the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity to address the spittlebug on the Big Island. The bill passed its first reading on Jan. 21 and was referred to the Agriculture and Environment and Ways and Means committees on Jan. 26.

“This bill is really about getting ahead of the problem,” Gabbard said in an email. “Not just reacting once the damage is already done.”

As of 2023, the bill said, the state’s livestock industry had a production value of more than $50 million with more than 143,000 beef cattle. Most of that cattle is raised on Hawaii island
and 70% of them feed on sod-farming grasses, such as kikuyo and pangola, which the spittlebug targets.

The bug is native to the southeast United States, said Nicole Galase, managing director for Hawaii Cattlemen’s Council. She said she helped lobby for the bill, which aims to help ranchers who are “shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to battle this bug on their own” stay in business while ensuring best practices are taking place to prevent the infestation from spreading.

“It’s not something that just ranchers alone can combat,” she said. “The fact is the ranchers are on the front line of having to deal with it, but eventually we are worried that it could be affecting any area with grass cover.”

When the spittlebug kills pasture grass, it clears the way for invasive grasses and weeds to move in, Thorne said. Those invasive grasses and weeds are incredibly
difficult for ranchers to
remove.

“It basically renders the rangelands that our livestock industry rely on almost to the point of not being able to support livestock production,” Thorne said. “It’s pretty devastating.”

So far, the infestation has been able to stay concentrated in the south Kona area, Thorne said, but a new population was recently discovered in Glenwood likely due to inadvertent human transportation.

Thorne said a response team could help educate ranchers about the bug and its impact so that they can implement quick responses as soon as they notice a dead patch of grass or spittlebug masses in the soil.

The bug is difficult to spot because of its small size and proximity to the soil line for the majority of its life cycle. Eggs are laid in soil and when they hatch, tiny nymphs excrete white froth known as “spittle mass” that protect them from predators and drying out. Adults can be seen hopping around the pasture for the final three to four weeks of their life.

As of now, Thorne said the best way to contain the pest is to target them while they are in the nymph stage by cutting the grass short and spraying pesticide after finding a patch of dying grass. He also advised ranchers to ensure mud is cleaned from equipment, shoes and cars.

A mobile phone application was also created by Thorne’s team to help the public identify and report the pest. The app can be downloaded at tlsbhawaii.com.

Franny Brewer, program manager for the Big Island Invasive Species Committee, said a key infrastructure need that is sometimes overlooked is a way for ranchers to store grass seed. Ranchers have a limited time to reseed land after grass is destroyed, she said, and timing that with shipping seed from the mainland has been a challenge.

“There’s no secure facility that has the right environmental conditions on this island where there could be a place where seed is stored so we could buy bulk seed and have it ready to distribute to the ranchers,” she said. “Just even that infrastructure would be huge.”

Brewer supported the bill but emphasized the need for a clear plan from the
department.

She added that the bug will not only have negative effects on the cattle industry and Hawaii’s food security, but also can impact Hawaii’s watersheds through soil erosion.

“It’s really important for any invasive species to have a plan early, and have steps that you can implement,” she said. “If you don’t have
a plan and you’re just getting funding willy-nilly, is that going to contribute
long term to the success
of the response?”

Stacey Chun, an entomologist for the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity in Hilo, said the agency needs more funding to do more research on mitigation strategies on the pest.

“The cattle industry is a $50 million industry,” he said. “We need all the support we can get for it. There are jobs and lifestyles affected and we need to help keep the local economy
going.”

Gabbard said if passed, the pilot response team will target early infestations, map the big’s spread and test most effective and affordable ways to control it. It will also allow support and reimbursement for ranchers to ensure they “aren’t left to shoulder the cost alone,” Gabbard said.

The program would need an estimated
$1.6 million to operation — $800,000 for each year — Gabbard said. He noted that the coconut rhinoceros beetle, which has decimated Oahu’s palm trees, showed what happens when invasive species outpace a coordinated response: containment becomes more expensive and less effective.

Gabbard emphasized that every dollar spent now will save more money down the line as the state works to stop the spread of bug.

“If we wait until this pest spreads across more islands and more ranchlands,” Gabbard said, “the cost to the state — in emergency response, lost agricultural production and higher food prices — will be far greater than what it takes to fund this pilot program and do it right the first time.”