Rebecca Garner Returns to Northwest Arkansas

Just a little more than a year after moving to Blytheville for a change of pace, one of the state’s top financial intellects is moving back to Northwest Arkansas.

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SEC-registered investment adviser Rebecca Garner expects to be back full-time in the area by mid-September.

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Garner, you may recall, moved to Fayetteville in 1994 to manage money for Alice Walton’s Llama Co., before the company was dissolved and she created Garner Asset Management in 1998.

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Garner sold GAM to Tom Garrison in February 2005 and left the new firm in April 2007 to join Decatur, Ill.-based Investment Planners Inc., a former institutional client of Garrison Asset Management (which is the newest incarnation of the firm). When she left GAM, the firm had more than 196 accounts and $265.7 million in assets under management.

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She still works for IPI, because all she needs is a Bloomberg computer and the ability to travel on occasion.

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We hear the Smackover native has her eyes set on a homestead in West Fork — a place complete with a mirrored disco ball — though the papers aren’t yet signed. She cited the pending birth of a grandchild and her daughter’s new business as two prime reasons for her return.