Editor’s note: This article is part of a special magazine celebrating 40 years of Arkansas Business. The full magazine is available here.
A source of institutional memory
Arkansas Business entered the 2010s with 25 years of service to the state’s business leaders under its belt and a core staff of veteran journalists with the network of sources and institutional memory that only come from time on task.
Source development is how Senior Editor Mark Friedman, who joined the staff in 2000, was able to break the first news of the bogus improvement district bond scheme that would destroy First Southern Bank of Batesville and send its largest shareholder, Little Rock attorney Kevin Lewis, to federal prison.
It’s how Managing Editor Jan Cottingham got an interview with Alice Walton before the opening of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
It’s how former Northwest Arkansas Editor Chris Bahn uncovered $4 million in overspending by the University of Arkansas’ Advancement Division in a single fiscal year.
Institutional memory allows us to add nuance and context to everyday stories. It is also how George Waldon — our most senior editor, having joined Arkansas Business in 1985 — knew the criminal history of Tony Rand, the former movie theater owner from North Little Rock, when he and all five of his sons went to prison for $100 million worth of oil and gas scams perpetrated in Texas.
Technological advances, particularly the rapid maturation of the internet and digital design tools, had improved our printing capabilities but also rendered some of our standard features obsolete. In 2011, we redesigned from front to back to take better advantage of color printing on every page and crisp photo reproduction on slick “coated” paper. We finally ditched a weekly table showing the closing price of local stocks that was already three days old by the time it reached readers on Mondays, and we introduced the Executive Q&A feature that has now introduced readers to some 650 business executives around the state.
– Gwen Moritz
Editor 1999-2021
2010
► Hundreds of thousands of Arkansans stood to gain health insurance after President Barack Obama signed the landmark Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act to overhaul the health care industry.
► Former Alltel execs opened a plethora of businesses in Little Rock, including Frank O’Mara and Gary Taylor’s runner supply store Go! Running, Randy Wilbourn and David Martin’s marketing and PR firm Martin-Wilbourn Partners LLC, and Phil Brandon’s Rock Town Distillery.
► Former Little Rock lawyer Gene Cauley began serving an 86-month sentence in federal prison on Jan. 25 after stealing more than $9 million from a client trust account.
► Football head coach Bobby Petrino led a Razorbacks resurgence, with the team heading to the BCS Bowl for the first time in the school’s history after ending the regular season ranked in the top 10 for the first time since 1989.
► Over-leveraging and sagging real estate values blamed on the recession caught up with some of the biggest names in Arkansas business, including John David Lindsey, son of Fayetteville real estate magnate Jim Lindsey, who filed the largest personal bankruptcy in memory: $169.6 million in debts against $9.9 million in assets.
► Conway’s Home BancShares Inc., Little Rock’s Bank of the Ozarks and Pine Bluff’s Simmons First National Corp. made out-of-state moves to expand their operations through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Florida was home to a string of six FDIC-assisted transactions for Home BancShares, growing its Centennial Bank branches to 49 in Florida, compared with 52 in Arkansas.
► The political landscape of Arkansas shifted as Republican candidates won nearly all of their races in November, including Republican John Boozman, who beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, and Rick Crawford, who became the first Republican since Reconstruction to win the 1st District congressional seat.
► Almost $2 billion of the state’s $3.1 billion share of federal stimulus dollars from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act had been spent by year’s end, most on education-related or road-improvement projects.
2011
► Former Little Rock attorney Kevin Lewis was sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for committing the largest fraud ever prosecuted in Arkansas’ history. Lewis orchestrated a fake special improvement district bond scheme that cost Arkansas banks more than $50 million.
► While banks around the nation continued to feel the lingering effects of the financial meltdown, Bank of the Ozarks Inc. made its sixth and seventh FDIC-assisted purchases, expanding its total assets by nearly $1.3 billion with First Choice Community Bank and The Park Avenue Bank, both of Georgia.
► After 6½ years of buildup, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in a 120-acre park in Bentonville, with Walmart Stores Inc. giving the museum $20 million to cover admission fees for all visitors.
► Inefficiencies and incompetence led to the rapid-fire departures of the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery’s top three executives, Ernie Passailaigue, David Barden and Ernestine Middleton. The South Carolinians launched the lottery in record time but ultimately over-promised and under-delivered on revenue and dollars available for scholarships.
► Billions of dollars were traded as some companies — like Chesapeake Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City — left the Fayetteville Shale Play and others moved in.
► Little Rock’s Windstream Corp. capped a period of heavy expansion with its largest acquisition yet, merging with Paetec Holding Corp. of Fairport, New York, in a $2.3 billion deal.
2012
► Arkansas Razorbacks Head Coach Bobby Petrino, regarded as the architect of the football team’s recent success, was fired after four years for “a pattern of misleading and manipulative behavior” after a motorcycle accident led to the revelation that he had hired an extramarital girlfriend to a position on the football staff.
► The implementation of Obamacare led to a wave of consolidation in the state’s health care industry. St. Vincent Health System of Little Rock bought Heart Clinic Arkansas; Baptist Health and Arkansas Cardiology partnered to form Baptist Health Heart Institute; and Arkansas Heart Hospital of Little Rock said it would open a cardiology clinic on the campus of Saline Memorial Hospital.
► As Walmart celebrated its 50th anniversary, it was hit with allegations that its Mexico division paid millions of dollars in bribes to ease the way for store openings. The investigation into alleged violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act expanded to other foreign markets, cost the company millions of dollars, and led to a lawsuit by shareholders.
► Dillard’s Inc. had another big year as its stock hit an all-time high, it announced it would build new stores for the first time since 2010, it opened a 852,000-SF internet fulfillment center in Maumelle (above), and it made moves to expand its online reach by investing $4 million in the e-commerce company Acumen Brands of Fayetteville.
► El Dorado’s Murphy Oil Corp. experienced a couple of milestones: CEO David Wood unexpectedly retired and was replaced by Steve Cossé, and the company announced plans to spin off its Murphy Oil USA Inc. retail arm that consists of gas stations and convenience kiosks traditionally attached to Walmart supercenters.
2013
► Layton “Scooter” Stuart, owner of Little Rock’s One Bank & Trust, died of a heart condition amid a federal investigation into allegations of self-dealing and loan fraud, leading Uncle Sam to seize assets including his family’s luxury cars and a $17.6 million life insurance payout.
► Amid another year full of bank consolidations, Home BancShares Inc. of Conway expanded into a $7 billion-asset concern with the $280 million cash-stock purchase of Jonesboro’s Liberty Bancshares Inc. The transaction also positioned Home BancShares’ Centennial Bank to become the second-largest based in Arkansas.
► The year saw the breakdown of several hospital consolidation deals, including a proposed affiliation between St. Vincent Health System and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, which broke down over church-state complications.
► As the economy continued to recover from the recession, two Arkansas companies — Windstream Holdings and J.B. Hunt Transport Services — debuted in the Fortune 500, joining four regulars: Walmart, Tyson Foods, Murphy Oil and Dillard’s.
► Arkansas passed into law its “private option,” under which money designated for the expansion of Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act would be used instead to purchase private health insurance for low-income workers earning up to 138% of the poverty line.
► The name Mayflower became synonymous with disaster as a neighborhood in the small central Arkansas community was suddenly flooded with more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil from a rupture in ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline.
2014
► Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale spent $8.55 billion to purchase Hillshire Brands Co. of Chicago after outbidding competitor Pilgrim’s Pride and reaching a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over antitrust concerns.
► Bank of the Ozarks Inc. of Little Rock announced its largest acquisition ever: the purchase of $1.2 billion-asset Summit Bancorp Inc. of Arkadelphia. The $216 million deal marked its first in-state transaction since buying River Valley Bank of Russellville in 2003.
► The bankruptcy of Turner Grain Merchandising Inc. of Brinkley, above, was expected to prompt new legislation in an attempt to prevent other companies from experiencing a similar collapse. The company, which acted as a middleman between farmers and grain buyers, came out on the losing end when it hedged its bets against volatility in the market, leaving many farmers unpaid.
► Doug McMillon of Jonesboro succeeded Mike Duke to become the fifth CEO of Walmart Stores Inc. and later jettisoned Bill Simon, CEO of Walmart U.S. since 2010, who had been considered a possible successor to Duke.
► Arkansas voters gave the state’s Republicans the keys to both Capitols, state and federal, electing the first all-GOP congressional delegation since Reconstruction, handing them all seven of the state’s constitutional offices and increasing their strength in the state House and Senate.
► Thanks to the “private option,” Arkansas’ innovative program that uses federal Medicaid expansion dollars to buy health insurance for low-income workers, about 200,000 Arkansans were newly insured in 2014 after the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
2015
► Faulkner County Circuit Judge Mike Maggio pleaded guilty to a federal charge of accepting a bribe, acknowledging that he lowered a lawsuit judgment against one of Michael Morton’s nursing homes in exchange for contributions from the nursing home magnate in 2013.
► The U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal, bringing Arkansas’ gay-marriage ban to an end.
► Arkansas lenders went on a buying spree, with the most prominent destinations for new deals lying in Georgia, Florida and Missouri. Little Rock’s Bank of the Ozarks Inc. led the procession with a string of out-of-state stock-swap transactions valued at almost $1.5 billion.
► State Rep. Justin Harris, R-West Fork, and his wife made national news when the Arkansas Times reported they gave their two adopted daughters to another couple, after which one of the girls was sexually abused. Harris defended his actions but later voted for a new law that made such “rehoming” a felony and announced he would not seek re-election.
► A new Republican governor and the Republican sweep of state offices meant many new faces in Arkansas government, including Larry Walther of Little Rock, chosen by Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson to succeed the long-serving and well-respected Richard Weiss as director of the state Department of Finance & Administration.
► With the passage of a federal highway funding bill, Arkansas began to formulate long-term plans to repair and replace highways and bridges, including a major project to widen Interstate 30 through Little Rock and replace its Arkansas River bridge.
► Several Arkansas cities took strides toward revitalizing their downtown areas, including Little Rock, where advertising firm CJRW moved into its renovated quarters on Main Street and phase one of the city’s Technology Park was scheduled to open in the fall of 2016.
2016
► Arkansas health care administrators started the year unsure if Arkansas’ hybrid Medicaid expansion plan, which had improved hospitals’ bottom lines, would continue. But the state Legislature in a special session approved Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s new plan, Arkansas Works, which made modifications to the so-called private option but still used federal money to buy insurance for the poor.
► Donald Trump won a presidential election like no other, defeating 16 Republican primary opponents and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state and first lady of Arkansas who was the first woman atop a major-party presidential ticket. The unconventional Trump won over voters despite numerous controversies, including revelations he avoided paying income taxes for years and allegations of shady business dealings and sexual assault.
► Steel and wood supplied the raw materials for big economic development news as Big River Steel began production at a $1.3 billion plant in Osceola, Nucor Corp. said it would add a $230 million cold mill to its Blytheville operations, and officials announced plans for a $1.3 billion pulp mill near Arkadelphia.
► It was a roller-coaster year for the state’s natural gas industry, starting with a supply glut that devastated prices, virtually halted drilling, and cut state severance tax collections by half. Then Energy Security Partners of Little Rock, led by Roger Williams and Arkansas figures Wesley Clark and Rodney Slater, announced plans for a massive $3.5 billion plant for turning natural gas into diesel and jet fuel, which would be the state’s largest economic development endeavor ever.
2017
► The firings of University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long and football head coach Bret Bielema underscored how grim things had become with the Arkansas Razorbacks. Bielema gave the football program its worst Southeastern Conference record of any multiyear coach, leading him and Long to be deemed overpaid and underperforming.
► Downtowns throughout Arkansas saw continued redevelopment, with projects like the U.S. Marshals Museum in Fort Smith, above, a new Tyson Foods Inc. office building in Springdale, and a multitude of redevelopment projects in downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock.
► Arkansas grocery stores in “wet” counties can now sell an expanded selection of wine thanks to the Legislature’s passage of Act 508, which triggered fierce opposition from liquor stores. Grocery stores previously had been limited to wine from “small-farm wineries” that produce less than 250,000 gallons per year.
► Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale reported its fiscal 2017 set a company record with earnings per share of $5.31 even after two significant reshufflings of executives during the year. The year started with a bang, too, as the company made its first acquisition under CEO Tom Hayes when it bought AdvancePierre Food Holdings of Cincinnati for $4.2 billion.
► A wave of Chinese companies announced factory plans in Arkansas or pushed them nearer to fruition. Meanwhile, Gov. Asa Hutchinson made his third trip to China to further promote Arkansas as an ideal spot for “reshoring,” returning factory jobs to the United States after a long trend in the other direction.
► Plans for the state’s newly sanctioned medical marijuana industry started to take shape, as laws were amended to protect employers, existing businesses agreed to provide banking and insurance services to the new industry, and dozens of entrepreneurs applied to the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission for one of the state’s five marijuana cultivator licenses.
2018
► The count of former Arkansas legislators convicted in federal court of corruption in two cases involving abuse of the state’s General Improvement Fund rose to five: former Reps. Micah Neal and Eddie Cooper and former Sens. Jon Woods, Jake Files and Henry Wilkins IV. Numerous other people were convicted in the cases, including former Ecclesia College President Oren Paris III of Springdale and Milton R. “Rusty” Cranford, lobbyist and executive of Preferred Family Healthcare of Springfield, Missouri. Jeremy Hutchinson resigned from the state Senate after pleading not guilty to a separate federal indictment for fraudulent abuse of campaign funds.
► Baptist Health of Little Rock expanded its footprint by buying Sparks Health System, including the 492-bed Sparks Regional Medical Center in Fort Smith (above), the 103-bed Sparks Medical Center in Van Buren and affiliated physician clinics in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.
► Medical marijuana got closer to becoming a reality as the state’s Medical Marijuana Commission awarded licenses to five cultivation facilities: Bold Team LLC, Natural State Medicinals, Osage Creek Cultivation, Natural State Wellness Enterprises and Delta Medical Cannabis Co.
► Walmart Inc. made another big splash in the e-commerce sector with the $16 billion acquisition of at least 77% of Flipkart Group of India.
► By a margin of 54-46, voters said yes to Issue 4, which allows blackjack, poker, roulette and other live Vegas-style table games in Garland, Crittenden, Jefferson and Pope counties.
► A U.S.-China trade war over tariffs on steel imports had support from Arkansas’ steel industry, but Arkansas soybean farmers suffered as sales to China dropped 97% in response to the tariffs.
► Arkansas’ electric co-ops still use coal for more than half of their power, but that dipped to just 47% of total state power in September. Gas generation was 28%, nuclear power 17%, and hydroelectric, solar and wind renewables together made up about 7%.
2019
► After many delays, medical marijuana finally became an industry in Arkansas when the state’s Medical Marijuana Commission approved 32 dispensaries, paving the way for 14 to open by year’s end.
► The U.S.-China trade war heated up — halving the number of Arkansas soybeans sold to the Chinese, hurting the state’s timber exports, and killing Chinese plans for a $410 million textile plant in Forrest City — before the Trump administration announced a trade deal in December.
► The first ever Vegas-style casino ventures in Arkansas came out of the gates with three towering multimillion-dollar projects in development: the new Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff and gaming expansions at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort, above, in Hot Springs and Southland Casino Racing in West Memphis.
► The University of Arkansas hired Sam Pittman as its 34th head football coach after consecutive 2-10 seasons torpedoed attendance and interest.
► Arkansas colleges and universities reported collective enrollment declined by more than 9% between the fall of 2011 (176,823), and the fall of 2018 (160,615). Experts said the downward trend could continue, as fewer births during the Great Recession will mean fewer high school graduates to enroll.
► Historic spring flooding caused one death and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in Arkansas, including $105 million to levees along the Arkansas River.
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