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Wall Street Journal: Bank of the Ozarks Fills Loan Void in Big Markets

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The Wall Street Journal today takes a look at Bank of the Ozarks Inc. of Little Rock, which it says is filling a loan void in big markets like New York and Houston.

The publicly traded bank, led by George Gleason, opened a loan production office in Manhattan in 2013. It established another office in Houston in 2014 after purchasing Bancshares Inc. for $23 million. It has other loan production sites in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta.

The Journal finds the company providing commercial loans in places where bigger banks have pulled back. It says the company now has $1.9 billion in loans outstanding in New York as of the first quarter, and its portfolio of loans and leases now stands at $9.7 billion.

“A lot of our competitors tend to move as a pack and are heavily driven by headline risk,” said George Gleason, the bank’s chairman and chief executive, on a recent call with investors. “So what we have tried to do is ignore the headlines, to a great extent…we are finding tremendous opportunities in Manhattan, Miami, Houston [and] Dallas.”

The Journal has more on what could be choppy waters ahead, as analysts weigh warning signs that the rally seen in some of those markets could be coming to end.

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