Oklahoma Bank Sold to Local Investors

If the number of banks doing business in a community can determine the strength of its economy, Bentonville is bursting.

The recent acquisition of a small Oklahoma bank just across the border likely will add to the market in the future.

Grand Savings Bank, a two-branch operation and the 69th largest bank in the state, is now locally owned by a group of investors primarily from Benton County.

They include Tony and Suzanne Steele, Rex and Carolyn Grimsley, Guy and Elizabeth Cable and Tyler and Patricia Steele of Bentonville; Gary and E. Jane Anderson, Steve and Jacqueline Zimmerman and Roland and Betty Julian of Rogers; Kirby and Robyn Lane of Grove, Okla.; and Indian Oaks Farms Inc. of Southwest City, Mo., which is owned by Kirby Lane.

“We had a contract with Chambers and purchased 100 percent of the stock of Grand Savings Bank,” said Guy Cable, a longtime Northwest Arkansas bank executive.

Other details of the sale were not released.

The investment group’s acquisition closed April 1, according to Tyler Steele. It removes GSB from the control of Chambers Bancshares Inc. of Danville, which bought controlling interest of GSB’s parent company, Peterson Holding Co. of Decatur, late last year. That deal also included the troubled Decatur State Bank.

“There is absolutely no connection now between Decatur State Bank or Chambers Bank with Grand Savings Bank,” said Steele, formerly an executive with First National Bank of Rogers who has been part of the GSB banking team since December, working from the lender’s Jay, Okla., office.

GSB has 65 employees at its two banking locations, both of them just across the border in Delaware County — its headquarters in Grove and a branch in Jay that was built in 2010.

According to FDIC data, as of Dec. 31, the lender reported $219.01 million in assets, $162.06 million in loans and $185.74 million in deposits.

Tony Steele, chairman, and Guy Cable, vice chairman, will head GSB’s new bank board.

Other board members are Tyler Steele, Rex Grimsley, Kirby Lane, Roland Julian, Mark Londagin (Grove, Okla.), Beverly Jones (Jay, Okla.) and Lendell Bass (Grove, Okla.)

Londagin is the current president and CEO at GSB, and his tenure with the lender is approaching three decades.

Cable, who resigned after 18 years from First National Bank of Rogers, formerly Bank of Rogers, in December, said GSB has yet to file any paperwork for a Bentonville branch.

“We’re just getting our arms around the purchase,” he said. “But we would love to be in Benton County.”

Cable isn’t the only bank executive to have that thought. According to data compiled by the Arkansas Bankers Association, there are 13 banks that do business in Bentonville, population 35,301, through a combined 21 offices.

The fact prompts some — but not all — observers to label the city as an over-served bank market.

“It’s certainly crowded,” said Bill Holmes, executive director of the Arkansas Bankers Association. “But it’s hard to say over-served because if they really were, they wouldn’t have made it through the storm we’ve been through.

“Maybe [over-served] by traditional standards, but it’s a free-market economy and they have all survived and found a niche.”

GSB currently competes with just one other bank in Delaware County, the Bank of Grove, and is the clear market leader there, Steele said.

The competition for customers in Bentonville would obviously be different, but not dire.

“Well, you can [survive] because there are other banks that have one branch or a couple that have survived,” said Tim Yeager, a banking professor at the University of Arkansas. “The problem is finding the good loans to make at reasonable terms. If you talk to bankers, they’ll tell you that the interest rates and structures of these loans are still extremely aggressive. And whenever there is a good prospect for a new loan, it’s like throwing it to the sharks.

“You have to identify good loans and decide in advance how aggressive you are going to be on the pricing.”

Cable said there hasn’t been any significant discussion on local leadership or location of a Bentonville GSB branch, other than an office would likely be in leased space in an existing building.

Added Steele: “This is down the road. It could be in a fairly short time, or it could be next year. But we hope sooner rather than later.”