Congratulations to Edward G. Untalan, executive vice president and Guam and CNMI region manager of First Hawaiian Bank — and the 2021 Guam Business Magazine Executive of the Year!
Nominees are asked to supply 10 to 12 photos from throughout their life. “I lost a hard drive a number of years back that had a lot of photos,” Ed said.
Oh dear, I thought and began searching in our archives. Plenty of photos of Ed, but unsurprisingly all of them at community events.
Then Ed sent me a OneDrive file — with 44 photos. Now I wonder what we are missing. But I hope you enjoy the selection our Creative team had choosing.
Writing the story about an Executive of the Year is a privilege. I had set aside an afternoon to take my time with the story about Ed in this magazine.
Then an invite from Ed arrived for a meeting of the Guam Chamber’s Strategic Development Committee for the same afternoon. It’s rare that I miss a chamber meeting, but I could not and did not make that meeting. Somehow, I think Ed will forgive me.
Take it from me that the Chamber’s board (on which I also sit) has enough to keep it occupied without tackling a strategic development plan and I am sure that Ed has enough to do as Chamber chairman and at the bank.
But there is no more appropriate time to review a strategic development plan than now — when the business community in Guam and the Chamber must look forward. Ed took the initiative to reactivate the committee, took all our thoughts, and came up with a framework — actually a Gantt chart, and an analysis. (If you know Ed, you will not be surprised at the Gantt chart or the analysis either.)
Since Ed talked about the plan at the March Chamber lunch meeting, it has also been heartening to see the number of Chamber members who have also joined that effort and the subcommittees.
Congratulations Ed!
If anyone is in doubt of the continued importance of petroleum across market sectors, you must be asleep.
In 2020, about 33% of the petroleum sales in Guam was for residual fuel (used for power plants, industrial boilers and as bunker fuel for ships), 24% was as motor gasoline, 24% was jet fuel, 17% was diesel fuel, and propane accounted for 2%.
Guam’s energy consumption on a per capita basis is about half the U.S. average.
In 2019, refined petroleum products were the Northern Mariana Islands top import and accounted for about 24% of the NMI’s total import costs that year.
While consumption may have dropped, there’s no doubt or our need of product. And convenience stores have become a part of our lives. The industry’s leading executives will update you further into the magazine.
