Home BancShares Chairman John Allison at Home on the Road

He likes New York. He likes Wall Street. And he likes Sparks Steak House.

John Allison, chairman of Conway-based Home Bancshares Inc., may have come from a small town, but these days, he’s about as big as they get. So when it’s time to go to the Big Apple, he fits right in.

Allison’s been there plenty of times to clinch investments for his banking enterprise, which recently rocketed to $7 billion in total assets with the blockbuster acquisition of Jonesboro-based Liberty Bancshares Inc., parent company of Liberty Bank of Arkansas, and its merger with Allison’s Home BancShares, parent to Centennial Bank.

Allison is heading back to New York in a couple of weeks to talk to a money manager of such magnitude that Home BancShares and Centennial might make it back into the headlines for all the right reasons.

And while there he may dine at Sparks, the revered steakhouse made famous by mobsters Paul Castellano and John Gotti.

If he does, he’ll experience a familiar feeling.

“It’s fascinating,” Allison said of the restaurant once frequented by the Gambinos. “You feel it in there.”

Allison was in Fayetteville this week to appear at a Thursday reception for Home BancShares, hosted by Liberty Bank at the University of Arkansas Alumni House.

While in Northwest Arkansas, he agreed to sit down with the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.

Allison came to town in his 45-foot Liberty bus, an immaculate RV with an interior finished in leather. When Allison is not on a jet to New York or Philadelphia, he travels in his bus. And that’s how it’s been for three decades, as Allison started out with motor homes.

“I’ve been moving up in the bus business over the years,” he said. “It’s a comfortable way to travel. This is my space.”

While Allison’s home is in Conway, he has strong ties to Northwest Arkansas. His daughter Whitney played soccer for the Razorbacks for four years and Allison is a regular at Razorbacks home football games. Like a lot of people, he enjoys the two-lane country roads, the eccentricity of Eureka Springs and the country pride of a place like Gentry.

“I know there’re people up here who work every day, but it’s like being in vacation land,” he said. “When I’m here, I’m relaxed. This is down-home America.”

Before the Great Recession, Allison had a significant investment in a bank in Northwest Arkansas. But he felt the winds blowing, and just before the crash, divested himself of those assets.

“Timing’s not everything, but it’s almost everything,” he said.

With the economy in recovery, at least here in Northwest Arkansas, Allison has returned. Now that the Liberty-Centennial deal is in the books — completion of the $280 million purchase was announced Oct. 23 — he has as much as $700 million invested in this region.

“I’m back,” he said.

The merger affects 15 locations in Northwest Arkansas including Fort Smith and Van Buren. Liberty Bank customers won’t see any physical changes overnight.

“We’ll do that within six months,” Allison said. “We don’t get in a hurry with that.”

Being head of the second-largest bank in the state speaks to the fact that Allison can make a titanic choice and live with the consequences. But there’s one decision out there he has yet to make. He’s still struggling with whether he should move up to the $8.5-$9-billion asset range and call it a day, or keep going until Centennial breaks through the $10-billion threshold.

If he does, he’ll have to deal with Dodd-Frank, federal legislation that would cost Centennial about $10 million a year in regulations.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said. “But the business side of me says, ‘Go for it, Johnny, go for it.’”

Allison is proud of Centennial, and even though the bank now has a market value of $2.1 billion, he still considers it a hometown thing.

“We built it one brick at a time and I feel like it’s a small company,” he said. “The banker smoking the big cigar with his feet propped up — that’s not it.”