Herbert Hall McAdams II, who grew to prominence as an Arkansas banker, died last night at his Little Rock home. He was 86.
A shrewd businessman with an uncanny eye for the future, McAdams reaped more financial reward from the banking consolidation wave of the ’90s than any other Arkansan.
During the course of his successful business career, he amassed a fortune valued at an estimated $450 million.
His wealth was built largely on a $10 million investment in Little Rock’s Union National Bank, which was teetering on the brink of failure in 1970.
McAdams had already proven himself to be a savvy operator by buying and building a string of successful banks in northeast Arkansas.
He saw the value of his bank holdings roll over multiple times after first selling the family’s stake in The Union of Arkansas for $115 million to Little Rock’s Worthen Banking Corp.
Worthen sold to Boatmen’s Bancshares of St. Louis, which sold to Nations Bancorp. of Charlotte, N.C., which purchased Bank of America in San Francisco.
Stock holdings continued to roll with the subsequent stock swap-sale of Jonesboro’s Citizens Bank. After purchasing Union National Bank, McAdams moved his family to Little Rock from Jonesboro.
Before joining the Navy in World War II, he graduated from Northwestern University in Chicago and the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville.
As an ensign aboard the U.S.S. Gamble, McAdams nearly was killed when a kamikaze plane slammed into the destroyer off the coast of Iwo Jima.
McAdams suffered second- and third-degree burns that covered 60 percent of his body.
“I looked like a raw tomato,” McAdams said in an interview with Arkansas Business in the 1990s. “They expected me to die, but I fooled them.”
McAdams spent about 18 months in various hospitals recuperating from his injuries before returning to Arkansas.
He began investing in banks in 1949. He shifted the focus of his career from law to become a bank CEO with the 1959 acquisition of Jonesboro’s Citizens Bank.
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