Hamilton Enjoying Retirement, Reflects on Career

Job loss is, unfortunately, a potential of working for any business. This is especially true in a merger of businesses.

Howard Hamilton, a banker with nearly three decades of institutional knowledge in Northwest Arkansas, did not survive the recent merger between Home Bancshares Inc. of Conway and Jonesboro-based Liberty Bancshares Inc.

He spends his time these days as a passive investor in Hamilton Family Investments LLC, an entity he and his sons are involved with which encompasses real estate investments in Texas.

An Oklahoma native, Hamilton and a silent business partner also have interests in the poultry industry. Through an entity called Fifth Farm LLC, Hamilton has owned poultry houses in Florida and Washington County in the past and currently owns a large-farm poultry operation in eastern Oklahoma with 10 broiler houses.

But with four decades in the banking industry behind him, it’s no surprise Hamilton, 63, is still a valued commodity in that field.

“I’ve had two or three calls [from other lenders] but at this point I don’t think I will pursue anything,” Hamilton said during a recent interview. “There would be one bank that I would consider working for, but I would only want to do that part-time. And I haven’t pursued that because I’ve enjoyed retirement more than I thought I would.”

 

Sudden Retirement

The departure from the banking industry came suddenly for Hamilton, who had been Northwest Arkansas regional president and chief operating officer for Liberty Bank of Arkansas from its entry into the market in 2004 until December.

For Hamilton, the road to retirement was, ultimately, set in motion last summer. In June, Home BancShares — holding company of Centennial Bank — announced it had acquired Liberty Bancshares — holding company of Liberty Bank — for $280 million.

The deal marked the largest in-state bank transaction in Arkansas history when it was approved by federal regulators on Oct. 24, and all 46 Liberty Bank locations in Arkansas — including 10 in Benton and Washington counties — began operating as Centennial Bank on Dec. 9.

As a result, Hamilton lost his job. On Dec. 13, a Centennial Bank employee confirmed a report published by NwaBusinessJournal.com that Hamilton was no longer with the company.

Centennial Bank issued a press release later in the day confirming the personnel move, with the additional announcement that Scott Hancock, Liberty’s executive vice president and chief lending officer for Northwest Arkansas, was the new division president.

Ultimately, Hamilton had no problem with that, although he believes the transition was handled poorly.

“From a business standpoint, I will be honest, it left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth,” he said. “I’ve worked 40 years and never been asked to leave a job.”

Yet that’s what happened Dec. 10. While attending a training session in Tontitown for the upcoming bank software conversion, Hamilton was summoned to the main Liberty branch on Joyce Boulevard in Fayetteville to meet with Centennial management.

“I left the training and very unceremoniously was told ‘We need you to leave,’” Hamilton recalled, adding the tone of the conversation was that he needed to exit by the end of the year. “It was pretty much my decision to leave by the end of the week.”

Hamilton said the severance he received made it easy to say, “I can retire with that.”

He added: “I had been planning for retirement for 25 years. I was prepared for it, but probably not for a couple of years.”

 

Arriving in NWA

Had Hamilton remained a banker through 2016, it would have marked three decades in the Northwest Arkansas market.

Howard and Treva Hamilton, and their sons, ages 5 and 1, moved from Oklahoma to Arkansas in the spring of 1986. Howard Hamilton began his new job in March, and the family came over two months later when school was dismissed for the summer.

Hamilton earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Oklahoma State University and completed The Graduate School of Banking of the South at Louisiana State University.

He built relationships with several bankers in the area while traveling as a regional banker representing First National Bank of Tulsa, building correspondent banking relationships in northeast Oklahoma, southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas.

He did business with two of the iconic families in Arkansas — the Waltons and the Hunts — as well as with several executives working with Tyson Foods Inc.

Hamilton and his wife always thought if a job opportunity ever presented itself in Northwest Arkansas, they would be interested.

“We wanted to raise our boys in a smaller community, and that’s what this area was at the time,” he said. “If you couldn’t get it at Walmart or Dillard’s, you couldn’t buy it here.”

The opportunity finally presented itself in the form of M. David Howell Jr.

Howell, who hailed from a Fayetteville banking family, was a bank president in Springdale by the time he was 28 in the late 1970s, and by 1983 had become CEO of First National Bank of Fayetteville.

FNB’s holding company was Little Rock-based Worthen Banking Corp. — parent company to Worthen National Bank — and owned by Jackson T. Stephens.

During an emergency cash crunch in 1985, Stephens was forced to sell off assets and sold FNB to Howell and Springdale trucking magnate J.B. Hunt for $22 million. They made the purchase in the name of Hunt & Howell Bancshares.

“They had to get Jack from the golf course at Augusta National and he had to come back to Arkansas because they were going to close [Worthen Bank],” Hamilton recalled of the financial emergency. “They had to start selling assets and it was during that process that David asked if I would like to come work for [FNB].”

A year later, Howell and Hunt bought First American Bancshares in North Little Rock, the holding company of One National Bank, for about $30 million, and Hunt & Howell Bancshares became one of the largest holding companies in Arkansas.

“David Howell had a large appetite,” Hamilton said. “He wanted to be the largest bank and the largest banker in Arkansas, and if you knew J.B. Hunt you know that played right into his hands.”

Troubled by investment losses, FNB was eventually sold back to a revived Worthen organization for $32 million in 1991. That sent a strong message to Hamilton.

“It was clear to me they had no inclination of being a community bank,” he said. “[Worthen chairman] Curt Bradbury is an investment guy, not a banker. That’s what he does.”

Hamilton left to take a job at First Commercial Bank in Rogers, but was there for just a short time before being offered a job in 1993 at Walton family-owned McIlroy Bank & Trust in Fayetteville, the oldest bank in the state.

The bank’s name was officially changed to Arvest Bank in 1996, and Hamilton had risen to executive vice president of the Fayetteville market when he was hired by Liberty Bank in July 2004 to lead the lender’s expansion efforts into Northwest Arkansas.

 

Liberty Minded

Liberty Bank entered the market when it purchased the Arkansas State Bank in Siloam Springs for $29.7 million.

Under Hamilton’s direction, the bank grew from four branches to 10 in two years in Northwest Arkansas, and its loan portfolio peaked at about $550 million.

Hamilton said the Walton family was generous to him, but joining Liberty was too great an opportunity.

“Their banking philosophy was much in line with mine, in that they were strong community bankers, they supported communities and they wanted people to be involved,” Hamilton said.

And like any good community banker, community involvement has always been at the forefront, for both Hamilton and his wife.

Treva Hamilton served as executive director of the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation from 1999 to 2011 and was inducted into the Fayetteville Schools Hall of Honor in 2012.

Howard Hamilton served 13 years on the Fayetteville School Board from 1997 to 2010.

He has also remained involved with the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. Hamilton is slated to moderate a number of chamber-sponsored candidate forums in the run-up to both the primary election in May and the general election in November.

An avid golfer, Hamilton can also be found frequently at Fayetteville Country Club.

Another perk of retirement.

“I did 12-hour days for a long time,” he said. “I am enjoying not having to be somewhere at 7:30 in the morning or go to an after-hours meeting at 6 o’clock at night.”