Stobaugh Lends Stability to Multiple Bank Mergers

If James Stobaugh ever retires, perhaps the banking industry will recognize him with a survivor’s award.

He has, after all, been through more mergers and acquisitions than most other bankers experience in a lifetime. He is the only upper-echelon executive from the days of Worthen Bank who remains with the successor company, NationsBank.

Stobaugh currently holds the title of president of NationsBank of Northwest Arkansas as well as that of the bank’s top commercial loan executive for Arkansas. He has earned the admiration of colleagues and competitors alike, and they recognize him as a fair man and a formidable competitor.

Close friend, former colleague and, now, competitor, Jack Fleischauer, says Stobaugh is “one of the most gracious people you’d ever want to meet.”

But, as for competing with his old friend, Fleishauer says, it can be tough.

“When we’re competing for the same deals, he’s a very formidable competitor. I see his tracks all over the place,” says Fleischauer, chief executive officer of First Commercial Corp.

Yet, Stobaugh says, banking wasn’t his first choice of a career. In fact, he never even considered it during his college days.

(That was 1964-68 at the University of Arkansas, a different era, as alums from that time period are apt to say. Take the Razorbacks, for instance. The football team didn’t lose a conference game until his junior year and Stobaugh remembers that vividly. The team lost 7-0 to Baylor University.)

As a marketing major in the UA’s College of Business Administration, Stobaugh considered using his skills in retail.

But that wasn’t to be. Instead, Stobaugh found himself considering two job offers, both from Pine Bluff banks. Ultimately, he accepted an offer from the National Bank of Commerce and declined one from Simmons First National Bank, and soon the young Stobaugh was on his way in the bank’s management training program.

He found he liked both banking and Pine Bluff. He married a Pine Bluff girl, and worked his way through the ranks, eventually becoming National Bank’s president in 1982 at the young age of 34.

Did he ever consider retail again?

No, says Stobaugh. In fact, he has kept so busy in the banking world that those issues of “might have been” have never arisen.

“My career moved along pretty fast,” Stobaugh says. “I’ve always been pretty challenged” by new responsibilities and positions.

Proving himself at every step, Stobaugh says that he seemed “always a little too young to be doing what I was doing” and frequently found himself the youngest executive in the room.

Fleishauer, whose move up the corporate ladder paralleled Stobaugh’s, says that was true.

“We were both young guys with a lot of experience. … We both have been blessed with people who have given us a lot of responsibility and who had confidence when we were young. Now, when I look back, we’ve both been in executive management positions for, golly, over 25 years now.

“That’s hard to believe.”

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Moving through the banks

When Stobaugh joined First Commerce Bank of Pine Bluff, it was a locally owned community bank. After he became president, the bank was among those purchased by Little Rock businessman Joe Giroir as he put together the network that he soon sold to Worthen Bank.

It was during that time, Stobaugh says, that he began to see what, in a few years, would happen in the banking industry as Worthen became larger, building a network throughout the state.

But even as the Worthen network grew, the Pine Bluff bank still held its own charter. It was part of the network, but, it was also independent, he says. Other than the name change to Worthen, “You really couldn’t tell much difference” from the days when the bank was locally owned.

At the time Worthen’s network was coming together, it was considered “quite an undertaking” to combine 10 separate institutions into one, Stobaugh recalls.

The changes for Worthen’s Northwest Arkansas operations began in earnest in 1992. The corporation’s Springdale bank, First State Bank, bought First National Bank of Fayetteville, and Worthen officials decided to combine those two operations into one. About the same time, the company bought a Bentonville bank.

Subsequently, the entire Worthen operation was bought out by St. Louis-based Boatmen’s, which last year sold to NationsBank. Currently, yet another merger is pending, one between Charlotte, N.C.-based NationsBank with West Coast counterpart Bank of America.

Whether the bank changes its name again has yet to be determined. Stobaugh says, however, that any decision will first be carefully weighed since a change would affect some 53,000 outlets.

For Stobaugh, the series of sales has given him experience in all sorts of different organizations: locally owned independent, statewide banking, regional banking and, now, national banking.

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Advertising target

Stobaugh says one of the most difficult times in his career came during the 1980s when interest rates were high — the prime rate was 21 percent — and commercial loans were simply unaffordable for most businesses.

What’s a commercial loan officer to do in such times?

“You really have to look at your customer, look at their needs and be creative,” Stobaugh says. The key to that is staying close to customers, he adds.

The many sales his bank has been through in recent years have made the company a prime target in competitors’ advertisements. All those ads that poke fun at banks with perpetually changing names are obviously directed at what is now NationsBank.

Stobaugh says he’s not bothered by those commercial attacks.

“I don’t take it personally. I have a job to do,” he says. “You focus on what you’re doing, not your competition.”

It’s wasted energy to spend effort talking about the competition, Stobaugh says. The important thing is to improve on your own institution’s performance.

As for the charges that NationsBank is an impersonal, outside organization, Stobaugh acknowledges the obvious: No, it’s not a locally owned community bank.

But, he says, “We’re hometown folks in a new capacity.”

NationsBank, he says, is prepared for the future.

“I think NationsBank is going to be an excellent competitor. It’s a long-term player,” Stobaugh says. The concept of national banking is the way future generations will bank, he continues. Whether a customer is in Arkansas or Florida or California, he or she will be able to access accounts and do business with the local branch of a national bank.

Model Bank, the system that allows Nationsbank to do that coast-to-coast banking, is scheduled to be in place in Northwest Arkansas this summer, possibly as early as mid-summer, Stobaugh says.

NationBank, he continues, is “the best sales organization I’ve seen.”

That pays off, he says, for the bank and for employees, who are rewarded for good work. And, Stobaugh says, NationsBank currently is doing more business in Northwest Arkansas than at any time since he moved here in 1992.

Again, competitors have criticized NationsBank’s emphasis on larger customers and its seeming indifference to smaller accounts.

But, Stobaugh says, NationsBank has brought services and contacts to customers that previously weren’t available, and that, he continues, is exciting.

Family man

Despite his banking expertise, Stobaugh’s interests are far-reaching. He and his wife, Vicky, have two grown children and the family remains close. Daughter Ellen and her husband, Ronnie Caveness, and son John and his wife, Olivia, all live in Northwest Arkansas also.

Stobaugh is an avid golfer but he’s also at home in the kitchen, where his specialties include Italian dishes of all kinds. He and Vicky are also frequent movier-goers and are involved with the Walton Arts Center.

After half a dozen years in Northwest Arkansas, Stobaugh says he and his wife will stay in the area.