First Hawaiian Bank Chairman and CEO Bob Harrison rang the closing bell in New York while nearly 5,000 miles away hundreds of the company’s Honolulu employees, dressed in bright red shirts, simultaneously rang hand bells Thursday in a cross-country celebration marking the stock market debut of the state’s largest financial institution.

In an initial public offering that was well received by the investing public, First Hawaiian’s shares surged 5.4 percent on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq to close up $1.25 at $24.25. The bank, which trades under its holding company name of First Hawaiian Inc., ended the day with a market capitalization of $3.38 billion. That value ranks the bank first in the state among publicly traded companies, just ahead of the $3.31 billion market cap of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.

“It’s just really exciting,” Harrison said by telephone from New York. “It’s a really exciting day for the bank and for us personally. Just all the work that went into this and the whole management team and for many, many people within the bank — we’re very excited that this day has come.”

About 30 bank officials and guests gathered around a lectern at the Nasdaq office in Times Square and clapped down the final seconds of trading before Harrison rang the closing bell and confetti streamed down from above. At the same time, bell-ringing First of Hawaiian employees watched a live stream of the Nasdaq celebration on a 15-foot-wide, 10-foot-high screen that was set up outside the bank’s downtown headquarters at the corner of King and Bishop streets.

Former First Hawaiian CEO Walter Dods, who is still on the bank’s board, was among those onstage at Times Square in New York.

“It was chicken-skin time today at Nasdaq,” he said after the market closed.

First Hawaiian’s stock, which trades under the symbol FHB, was priced Wednesday at $23. As often happens with IPOs, the shares opened at a higher price to the public with the first trade at $24.20. The stock began trading at 11:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (5:40 a.m. Hawaii time) — more than two hours after the market opened. Its trading range for the day was $24 to $24.76, and 11.6 million shares changed hands.

“I think what investors clearly said is that they believe the bank has the ability to perform very well and expect the stock to reflect that because the bank has a strong leading market share in the Hawaiian Islands, Saipan and Guam and a very efficient cost structure,” said a person who worked on the deal but declined to be identified.

The person also noted that the 20-cents-a-share dividend that First Hawaiian will pay in the fourth quarter offers an “attractive” annual dividend yield of 3.5 percent, based on its $23 IPO price, relative to rival Bank of Hawaii’s dividend yield of 2.8 percent.

The initial public offering raised about $485 million for BNP Paribas, whose ownership of First Hawaiian dropped to 84.9 percent from 100 percent following the sale of 21.1 million shares at $23 apiece. BNP will keep all the proceeds of the sale, which it previously said were needed to generate more capital and satisfy regulatory requirements. BNP has said it will sell off its remaining ownership of the bank over an unspecified period of time.

Dods was the last CEO to oversee the bank when it was a public company 15 years ago. Dods was replaced by Don Horner after Dods retired on Dec. 31, 2004. BNP acquired 45 percent ownership of First Hawaiian in 1998 as part of First Hawaiian’s merger with San Francisco-based Bank of the West and then bought the balance in 2001 when First Hawaiian ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“I was thrilled for the current management team, who worked so hard to make this happen,” Dods said. “Bob, (President) Eric (Yeaman) and the team are going to take the bank to new heights. At the time we got together with BNP, it was the right strategy, and during the dark days of the national financial crisis, it was good to have a trillion-dollar bank behind us. They helped us become an almost $20 billion-asset bank. The time is right for FHB to become independent again.”

Harrison said First Hawaiian won’t change its operations because its stock went public.

“BNP has been a great owner for 15 years and really allowed us to run the bank as we see fit and supported us in that process,” he said. “We’re not anticipating any changes in our operations. From a public standpoint, though, the public will have more detailed information through the normal SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) reporting process.”

The SEC requires companies to report total compensation for the top five executives and all directors, detailed quarterly financial results and any major changes.

First Hawaiian, which has $19.1 billion in assets and 62 branches, is no stranger to the Nasdaq, having traded there from 1974 to 1998 before moving to the NYSE from 1998 to 2001 after BNP acquired partial and then full ownership of the bank.

“They’re both great institutions,” Harrison said of the NYSE and Nasdaq. “We talked to both, but Nasdaq seemed to be a better fit for us.”

The offering is the largest for a U.S. bank since Citizens Financial Group Inc raised $3.5 billion in 2014.

First Hawaiian is also the first Hawaii financial company to go public since Territorial Savings Bank’s parent company was converted from a mutual holding company into a publicly traded corporation in July 2009. The last Hawaii company to go public on one of the three major exchanges was Hawaiian Telcom, which began trading on Nasdaq in March 2012 after previously trading on the so-called pink sheets.