J. French Hill

French Hill is entering his 11th year of leadership at Delta Trust & Banking Corp., which has amassed total assets of more than $273 million. During the past 12 months, Delta Trust completed its third stock offering, which raised $6.4 million in capital.

Under Hill’s direction, banking operations have grown to nine locations in central, southeast and northwest Arkansas. Established in Parkdale (Ashley County) in February 1910, Delta Trust & Bank added a Fayetteville office in September.

The Little Rock native worked in banking and politics for 18 years in Texas and Washington, D.C., after graduating magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University with a degree in economics and a minor in history.

His out-of-state résumé includes bond portfolio management and strategic planning at First International Bancshares/First National Bank of Dallas, 1979-82; banking and securities adviser for U.S. Sen. John Tower of Texas, 1982-84; investment banker at Mason Best Co. of Dallas, 1984-89; deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, 1989-91; and special assistant to the president and executive secretary of the Economic Policy Council, 1991-93.

The third-generation banker returned to Arkansas in 1993 to join Little Rock’s First Commercial Corp. He oversaw the trust company and broker-dealer operation there prior to leading the launch of Delta Trust in 1999.

Hill serves as a director at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, a commissioner of the Historic Arkansas Museum, chairman of the UALR College of Business Advisory Board and chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee of Fifty for the Future.

Hill especially enjoyed raising funds for Children’s and adding the Little Rock hospital to the national list to receive teddy bears from the Theodore Roosevelt Association.

“Getting to see those kids’ faces when they got to pick out a teddy was a whole lot of fun,” he said.