Treasury Department Announces Pricing of Public Offering of Central Pacific Financial Common Stock

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced today that it priced a secondary public offering of 2,850,000 shares of common stock of Central Pacific Financial Corp. (the “Company”) at $12.75 per share.  The aggregate net proceeds to Treasury from the offering are expected to be $35,883,281.25. 

After this offering, Treasury will continue to hold 2,770,117 shares of the Company’s common stock and warrants to purchase 79,288 shares of the Company’s common stock.  Treasury’s initial preferred stock investment in the Company, made as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s (TARP) Capital Purchase Program (CPP), was exchanged for common stock on February 18, 2011 as part of a larger recapitalization of the Company.  Today’s sale is part of Treasury's ongoing efforts to exit its remaining TARP investments.

The closing is expected to occur on or about June 22, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.  Sandler O’Neill & Partners was the book-running manager for the offering, and C.L. King & Associates, Guzman & Company and SL Hare Capital were co-managers.   

A registration statement relating to the shares in this offering and shares held by certain other selling shareholders was previously filed by the Company and declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”).  A post-effective amendment no. 1 and post-effective amendment no. 2 to the registration statement have been filed by the Company with the SEC and have been declared effective.  These filings are available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.

Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in the registration statement and other documents the issuer has filed with the SEC for more complete information about the issuer and this offering.  You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, any of the underwriters of the offering will arrange to send you the prospectus if you request it. Copies of the prospectus may be obtained when available from Sandler O’Neill & Partners, L.P., 919 Third Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022 (1-866-805-4128), C.L. King & Associates, 410 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10022 (212-421-3242), Guzman & Company, 101 Aragon Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33134 (305-374-3600) and SL Hare Capital, 10635 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 115, Los Angeles, CA 90025 (310-479-1680).

This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.