National pub notes high-performance lenders with Arkansas ties

ABA Banking Journal, a publication of the American Bankers Association, in May published its annual look at the best-performing large banks in the country.

Mainly it concentrated on publicly traded banks with assets of $3 billion or more, and the top 25 list (ranked by return on average equity in 2009) included a few that have operations in Arkansas: No. 4 Great Southern Bancorp of Springfield, Mo., which has a branch in Rogers; No. 6 IberiaBank Corp. of Lafayette, La., the holding company for IberiaBank FSB of Little Rock; and No. 21 BOK Financial Corp. of Tulsa, the holding company for Fayetteville-chartered Bank of Arkansas.

But not all the country’s best-performing banks are publicly traded, so Banking Journal also listed the top 10 private and foreign-owned banking companies. And there at No. 5 was Arkansas’ own First Security Bancorp of Searcy.

First Security’s ROE of 15.15 percent was better than all but eight of the largest publicly traded companies, and it would be No. 13 on a combined list of U.S. banks of $3 billion or more in assets. Reynie Rutledge’s company also reported return on average assets last year of 1.68 percent.

Banking Journal didn’t report on net income, but First Security’s call report tells us that those ratios translate into a profit of $40.64 million last year.

But that was last year. What about 2010?

Well, for the first quarter, First Security’s returns were even better: ROE of 19.22 percent and ROA of 1.81 percent.

And first-quarter net income? $14 million.