Cable Still Having a Grand Time on NWA Bank Scene

In the years since he was honored as a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 1998 Forty Under 40 class, Guy Cable has had a grand time as a local lender.

During a recent interview, Cable said: “It’s a blast doing what you love. And as you get older, you learn what to do and what not to do.”

Cable, 51, is vice chairman of Grand Savings Bank, a small Oklahoma-based lender that entered the Northwest Arkansas market last year.

GSB, at the time a two-branch operation and the 69th largest bank in Oklahoma, was acquired in April 2013 by a locally owned group of 16 investors primarily from Benton County. Among them? Guy Cable, who left a longtime job with another local lender.

The investment group’s acquisition removed 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 in 2012.

GSB, a $215 million bank headquartered in Grove, Okla., opened its first location in Arkansas in November with a branch on the northwest side of Bentonville.

“The hardest part was just looking at your [job] security,” Cable said. “You can fall back on that, but I just felt like it was time to take a risk. And it’s been like coming alive again. It’s almost like starting Bank of Rogers again.”

Sixteen years ago, Cable was on a professional path most would’ve predicted — banking. He was a vice president and founding officer of the Bank of Rogers. The new bank received its state charter in September 1995 and opened its doors two months later.

A Rogers High School graduate, Cable was introduced to the industry at Farmers and Merchants Bank, where his mother worked for more than 20 years.

Dorman Bushong, the bank’s longtime president, helped Cable pursue banking as a profession.

“He really took me under his wing, and actually he really suggested that I needed to be a bank regulator to get a varied background,” Cable said. “And I did exactly what he said.”

After earning a degree in finance and banking from the University of Arkansas in 1984, Cable spent a decade working as an examiner with the Oklahoma State Bank Department.

He returned to Northwest Arkansas in 1994 to work for FMB, then changed jobs again a year later to start Bank of Rogers. The new bank received its state charter in September 1995 and opened its doors two months later with $3.5 million in capital.

In 2002, Cable was named the bank’s president and was elected to its board of directors. He was also becoming a community leader, serving as president of the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, and recognized by the organization in February 2003 with the Businessperson of the Year Award at its 81st annual banquet.

But in November 2004, with the bank sitting on $116 million in assets, two Rogers branches, another in Centerton and one under construction on Pinnacle Hills Parkway, the bank was sold to First Bank Corp. of Fort Smith.

The bank was rebranded as First National Bank of Rogers, a division of The First National Bank of Fort Smith, and Cable remained the market president until resigning in December 2012 to pursue the GSB acquisition.

“It was a good marriage; I learned a lot from [FSB],” Cable said. “Community banking roots are what I have always known and it was fun to learn from a different culture. It was a great group of people.”

As for the future of GSB, which is now owned by a group of 26 investors, Cable said a second full-service branch will open this summer in Rogers at 1303 W. Hudson Road at the intersection of 13th Street. 

Any further expansion would be “very economical,” Cable said, adding that an additional one or two Benton County branches in the next few years is likely.

“The whole key is to do what you know and do it well, and we know Benton County,” Cable said. “That’s where we really need to concentrate our efforts.”

As for how he spends free time, Cable enjoys taking trips to the family cabin for fly fishing excursions on the White River in Calico Rock.

He also takes advantage of the area’s growing cycling scene.

“We’re not mountain bikers or anything,” he said. “We call it putt-puttin.’”