Banker’s Rise Highlighted By One Signature Move

In the years since he was honored as a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 1997 Forty Under 40 class, Gary Head’s career has been marked by one signature move.

Head, 51, is chairman and chief executive officer of White River Bancshares Inc., the holding company for Signature Bank of Arkansas, the fourth-largest bank in Washington County with a 6.9 percent market share, with branches in Fayetteville, Springdale and Bentonville.

The bank officially opened its doors in May 2005, and has grown to be a $500 million bank.

During a recent sitdown, Head said: “To have amassed the market share we have in a short period of time is a success to all our people. We’re competing against banks that’ve been here 20 or 30 years.”

But back to that signature move, one motivated by the entrepreneurial spirit that has been a hallmark of numerous Northwest Arkansans.

Fourteen years ago, Head was 14 years in to his banking career, holding a prominent title of senior vice president at Arvest-owned McIlroy Bank & Trust Co. in Fayetteville, one of the area’s leading banking establishments. The institution, purchased by Jim Walton’s Arvest Bank Group Inc. in 1986, was renamed Arvest-Fayetteville in November 2001.

Up to that point, Head’s professional arc could best be described as fast-rising.

“I started at that bank right out of college as a credit file clerk,” he recalled. “Doing the nastiest jobs, but I wanted a chance to get in the banking business and John Dominick, my banking professor at the U of A, got me that job.”

The rise continued in 1998 with Head’s promotion to executive vice president for business development, and in September the following year, he was elevated to McIlroy’s president and CEO, prompted by the resignation of Jim Glenn.

“I had started at 21 years old and accomplished everything I could have imagined,” Head said.

But in May 2004, Head abruptly resigned to join William King Gladden, chairman and CEO of Community First Bank of Harrison; Johnny Allison, chairman of Home Bancshares of Conway; and others to form White River Bancshares.

Head, who had been trying to decide “what to do and what to be” for some time, recalled the conversation he had with Walton to discuss his departure, breaking the news to him in terms Head thought would be relatable.

“I talked to Mr. Walton on a Sunday at his mother’s house,” Head said. “He said, ‘Why would you want to do this?’ And I said, ‘Well, if your father had stayed at J.C. Penney’s, there wouldn’t be a Wal-Mart.’ It’s an entrepreneurial thing that’s either in you or it’s not.”

The rollercoaster ride in the financial industry has included lows of a personal and professional level. Gladden, whom Head likened to a big brother, died in a private plane crash in January 2005.

Eight days after his death, investors announced they had received approval for Signature from the Arkansas State Bank Board.

In 2010, the bank posted $15.7 million in losses. Approximately $10 million of that, according to a Business Journal article published in January, was an impairment to the $11.8 million worth of goodwill that had been carried on Signature’s balance sheet since it spent some $30 million to buy Bank of Brinkley in 2007.

“No fun, worst year I’ve ever had,” Head told the Business Journal, “but our capital remains strong.”

And so, too, does Head’s presence at Signature, calling it his “lifetime” destination. His organization has a very familial feel with peers who have worked with and for him throughout his career, as well as Gladden’s daughter Will and Head’s daughter Alex. The two married in June and are both private bankers within the company.

As a community banker, Head is also involved with several organizations at both the local and state levels, including the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, the Northwest Arkansas Council, the Goshen Fire Department and the UA Nursing School Advisory Board.

As for how he spends his free time, Head is an active Razorback fan and an avid outdoorsman, spending time on the Cache River near Brinkley hunting ducks and in Kansas with a bow and arrow in search of deer.

“I’ve had some great ideas in a tree stand,” he said. “You get to sit still, very quietly, for a long time and for a guy like me, that’s not easy.”