Through The Years: The 2000s (40 Years of Arkansas Business)

Editor’s note: This article is part of a special magazine celebrating 40 years of Arkansas Business. The full magazine is available here.

Entering the online era

A competitive Arkansas Business editorial staff for years had been eager to have an outlet to share business news with readers more than once a week, and 2000 marked the beginning of a transformative era.

Back in 1993, we were introduced to the internet and began to consider the possibilities for media. We launched abnews.com as the first media website in Arkansas, but cumbersome dialup modem connections and no demand for paid online subscriptions led us to scrap the effort within a year.

In the late ’90s, some of our publishing friends had begun to distribute a subscription-based daily news product by — get this — fax machine. But about the time we were ready to pursue those efforts in 1999, the magical dot-com bubble of website startups was upon us and we were ready for a fresh start online.

We recruited Brent Birch to lead the initiative, successfully acquired the arkansasbusiness.com domain and put together a website plan with Aristotle, an early website development firm. A content-rich website with daily news, stories from the print edition and its supplements and access to archives would drive the website.

Beginning in December 2000, the first Daily Report e-newsletter edited by Lance Turner was delivered to in-boxes around 11:30 a.m. and provided stories that everyone would talk about over business lunches, and weekly industry-specific e-newsletters were also created. Best of all: When major business news broke in Arkansas, our readers became the first to know through Breaking News e-newsletters.

We were ahead of the curve among Arkansas media and among the leaders of our business media peers across the country. The website won national awards, became a model for many business journals and led to creation of the Flex360 website development firm in 2004.

The keys to online success for Arkansas Business we identified back in 2000 remain intact today: a strong brand, exclusive content and ongoing marketing ability.

 

– Jeff Hankins
Editor 1993-1999
Publisher 1997-2012

 

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2000

► Donrey Media Group, later to be renamed for the Stephens family that owned it, announced an expansion in northwest Arkansas. That news was trumped when Walter Hussman’s Wehco Media and the Walton-owned Community Publishers Inc. announced an “alliance” that would result in CPI papers being inserted in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

► TCBY Inc. of Little Rock was sold to Capricorn Management Inc. of Stamford, Connecticut. First United Bancshares Inc. of El Dorado purchased Texarkana First Financial Corp. just in time for both to be sold to BancorpSouth Inc. (now Cadence Bank) of Tupelo, Mississippi.

► Revitalization of the downtown areas of Little Rock and North Little Rock continued as Arkansas finally saw the design for the Clinton Presidential Library (above). Heifer International announced plans to develop a new headquarters and “global village” nearby, and ground was broken on Acxiom Corp.’s new downtown office building.

► After devouring 40 companies in three years, StaffMark Inc. of Fayetteville shed divisions until it had slimmed from a $1.2 billion staffing behemoth to a $20 million “electronic-olutions company.” Renamed Edgewater Technology Inc., the company moved to Wakefield, Massachusetts.

► With Dillard’s Inc.’s stock price at its lowest level in more than a decade and one disappointing earnings report following another, Forbes magazine blasted the controlling Dillard family’s inability to keep pace with retail evolution and its stubborn refusal to relinquish control or seek outside help.

► Diesel prices shot up nearly 30% in the first six months of the year. Arkansas, with about 1,500 for-hire trucking companies, was hit particularly hard.

► Rabid boosterism, economic turf and regional pride greeted Frank Broyles’ proposal to move at least one Razorbacks game from Little Rock to Fayetteville. University of Arkansas trustees settled on a compromise that reduced War Memorial Stadium’s share to two games a season for 11 of the next
15 seasons.

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2001

► The U.S. economy began to contract in March, news that came as no surprise when it was announced late in the year.

► Tyson Foods announced on New Year’s Day a $4.2 billion deal to buy IBP Inc. of Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, a giant beef and pork producer. By March, Tyson was trying to back out, but a court ordered the show to go on and Tyson became the biggest U.S. player in the meat industry.

► The hijacking of four U.S. airliners by Muslim extremists who were able to crash three of them into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., was unchallenged as 2001’s biggest news story in every category.

► Jonesboro celebrated the decision by Nestle USA to build a $165 million frozen foods manufacturing plant that would eventually employ 1,000 workers and pump a payroll of $27 million a year into the Delta’s economy.

► The desperate nursing home industry found relief from the country’s lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates in the form of a bed tax on private-pay patients, but relief from soaring liability insurance rates was nowhere in sight.

► As has been its pattern, Walmart flourished during the down economy of 2001, reporting double-digit sales growth even as the recession became more and more apparent.

► Acxiom Corp. had an especially rocky year. Revenue in the quarter that ended March 30 was 70% below analysts’ expectations, and it was followed by cuts in pay and other expenses and then the layoff of more than 7% of its workforce.

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2002

► Democratic Attorney General Mark Pryor unseated Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, Gov. Mike Huckabee survived a challenge by State Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher, and first lady Janet Huckabee’s run for secretary of state went down in flames.

► Democratic Attorney General Mark Pryor unseated Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, Gov. Mike Huckabee survived a challenge by State Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher, and first lady Janet Huckabee’s run for secretary of state went down in flames.

► With sales of $217.8 billion in 2001, Walmart Stores Inc. of Bentonville became the “Fortune 1” — the largest company in the world in terms of revenue.

► Arkansas economic developers made their first serious run at landing a full-fledged automobile factory at Marion but finished runner-up for the Toyota pickup truck plant that was instead to be built in San Antonio.

► M. David Howell Jr. of Little Rock was found dead of a drug overdose in a Beverly Hills hotel just days after a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme he had been running began to unravel.

► The Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with a lower court’s finding that the state’s educational system was so inadequate and inequitable as to be unconstitutional and gave the General Assembly until Jan. 1, 2004, to fix it.

► State, city and county governments made painful cuts as the national economy continued its sluggishness but got one bit of good news: Voters rejected a proposal that would have removed all sales taxes from groceries.

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2003

► Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, 58, of Little Rock, the former NATO supreme commander, officially declared his candidacy for president in September, drawing renewed national attention to Arkansas. He immediately began campaigning against President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, an action that required the call-up of thousands of Arkansas guardsmen and reservists.

► With heavy business lobbying and support on grounds that spiraling “jackpot” jury judgments and insurance costs needed to be reined in, the state Legislature finally passed and Gov. Mike Huckabee finally signed the Civil Justice Reform Act of 2003.

► The time bomb that was the state Supreme Court’s Lake View decision was still ticking as the year ended. Despite having more than a year’s notice, a special legislative session that began Dec. 8 was still in session when 2004 arrived, and the Senate and House appeared hopelessly deadlocked over whether to force consolidation of school districts with fewer than 500 students.

► In a year in which many Arkansas banks grew, mostly by acquisition, Walton-owned Arvest Bank of Fayetteville secured its position as the largest bank chartered in Arkansas by buying the Bank of Yellville and publicly traded Superior Financial Corp. of Little Rock, the holding company for Superior Bank of Fort Smith.

► Development escalated in the River Market area of downtown Little Rock with the topping-out of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Museum, Library & Policy Center, groundbreaking on Heifer International’s new headquarters, and construction of the 14-story First Security Center.

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2004

► After securing more lucrative college and high school basketball action at Alltel Arena, North Little Rock city officials announced elaborate plans for a $25 million minor league ballpark to be built for the Arkansas Travelers on a 22-acre north shore site.

► After a prolonged battle, the General Assembly approved a measure to consolidate 59 school districts with fewer than 350 students. The move came in response to a state Supreme Court decision that declared Arkansas’ education system inequitable and inadequate.

► The Clinton Presidential Library opened in downtown Little Rock, attracting thousands of visitors and ending years of anticipation.

► More than $400 million worth of hospital construction took place around the state, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at Little Rock announced a building plan with a price tag of nearly $170 million.

► In a nice rebounding year for Arkansas public company stocks, investors salivated over J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell and USA Truck Inc. of Van Buren, as their quarterly income started matching annual income from a few years earlier.

► Hino Manufacturing U.S.A. Inc., a subsidiary of Toyota, broke ground on its 400,000-SF auto parts plant at Marion’s Railport Industrial Park, while Toyota suppliers Denso Corp. and Sakae Riken Kogyo Co. announced plans for plants in Osceola and Wynne.

► The number of individual bank charters in Arkansas continued to decline thanks to mergers, but the number of individual bank branches increased by 54, led by Little Rock-based Bank of the Ozarks (now Bank OZK), which added seven branches from Van Buren to Cabot.

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2005

► North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Hays saw his personal field of dreams realized when city taxpayers agreed to help fund a new riverfront baseball stadium for the Class AA Arkansas Travelers.

► Financier Jack Stephens died at age 81.

► For 10 years Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield fought the Patient Protection Act of 1995, the “any willing provider” law. But the fight came to an end when the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of the act, resulting in the shakeup of Arkansas’ insurance industry.

► Fort Smith nursing home chain Beverly Enterprises Inc. announced its sale for $1.59 billion to Fillmore Strategic Investors of San Francisco after fighting off a hostile takeover by the investor group Formation Capital LLC of Alpharetta, Georgia.

► Action at the Fayetteville Shale Play, one of the country’s largest known unconventional reserves of natural gas, was shoved into high gear by the combination of record-high gas prices and new “fracking” technology for extracting gas from its underground shale formations.

► Though not directly hit by Hurricane Katrina, Arkansas saw major impacts from the deadly storm as the state temporarily housed more than 60,000 Gulf Coast evacuees; the price of gas and construction materials spiked; and Murphy Oil Corp. of El Dorado sustained damage to its refinery at Meraux, southeast of New Orleans.

► Gov. Mike Huckabee’s ascension to the chairmanship of the National Governors Association, along with his flirtation with presidential politics and the release of his book of weight-loss advice, helped return Arkansas to the national spotlight.

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2006

► After Republican Lt. Gov. Winthrop Paul Rockefeller withdrew from the governor’s race because of a blood disorder that ultimately proved fatal, Democrats recaptured or retained all of Arkansas’ constitutional offices.

► Telecom companies like Verizon and a merged AT&T/Cingular positioned themselves as single-source providers of voice, cellular, broadband and video services, while Little Rock’s Alltel Corp. bucked the trend by becoming a purely wireless company after spinning off its wireline service.

► Dillard’s Inc.’s stock price rose almost 40% during the year to hit $36.09, its highest since 1998.

► Attorney General Mike Beebe defeated Asa Hutchinson, a former U.S. representative and Homeland Security undersecretary, to win the governor’s seat.

► Home BancShares Inc., a bank holding company modeled after Little Rock’s First Commercial Corp., went public with a $51 million stock offering.

► Rice farmers in Arkansas and five other states filed lawsuits against Bayer CropScience and Riceland Foods Inc. of Stuttgart after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a genetically altered rice strain developed by Bayer had contaminated the commercial long-grain rice crop.

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2007

► The Arkansas Razorbacks saw unparalleled upheaval as longtime Athletic Director Frank Broyles retired and was replaced by Jeff Long, women’s basketball head coach Susie Gardner resigned, men’s basketball head coach Stan Heath was fired, football offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn resigned, and football head coach Houston Nutt left and was replaced by Atlanta Falcons head coach Bobby Petrino.

► A $3 billion private equity buyout of Acxiom Corp. collapsed under the weight of two consecutive quarters of disappointing earnings and a credit crunch that scuttled a number of other leveraged buyouts.

► Strings of bankruptcies, foreclosures and loan losses hit the state’s real estate market, especially in northwest Arkansas, where residential sales plummeted nearly 29% in Benton County and almost 20% in Washington County in the first 10 months of the year.

► Alltel Corp. of Little Rock, the fourth-largest publicly traded company headquartered in Arkansas and the fifth-largest wireless telephone provider in the country, announced its sale to two private equity funds, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, for $27.5 billion.

► The slower housing market and tighter credit added to the weak demand for lumber, leading sawmills in Arkansas to close down or cut back production at a rate never seen before.

► Major players in the Fayetteville Shale Play, such as Southwestern Energy Co. of Houston and Chesapeake Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City, moved from frantic mineral rights leasing to actual drilling, despite concerns that the state Department of Environmental Quality did not have enough inspectors in the area to monitor the potentially hazardous drilling procedures.

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2008

► H. Lee Scott Jr. announced he would step down as CEO and president of Walmart after leading the world’s largest company for nearly nine years and be replaced by the company’s international division president, Mike Duke.

► With the country in recession, Arkansas’ state government had a budget surplus while most others were in debt. But job cuts and plant closings dotted the state as companies tried to bring financial order to their operations.

► Alltel Corp. announced it planned to sell to Verizon Wireless for $28.1 billion, topping its own recent sale as the biggest deal in Arkansas history.

► Federal regulators shut down ANB Financial of Bentonville, making it the third in a long string of bank failures across the country during the year, with hundreds more bank failures to come in the next three years.

► Windmill-turbine makers moved Arkansas closer to becoming a wind energy capital. After the arrival of Danish-based LM Glasfiber in Little Rock in 2007, two more wind energy-related firms announced plans to locate here, and Gov. Mike Beebe hinted at the possibility of a fourth.

► Reports of a secret $300,000 bonus for then-President Lu Hardin started an avalanche of bad publicity for the University of Central Arkansas, which led to revelations about operating deficits. Hardin returned the bonus, but his attempt to boost his compensation led to his resignation and the departures of several other high-ranking administrators.

► Dillard’s Inc. saw continued bad news as the Little Rock-based company’s stock dwindled, its sales continued to fall and its management was hounded by an activist shareholder group. The company tried to satisfy critics by closing 21 underperforming stores and cutting jobs.

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2009

► As the congressional debate on how to overhaul the nation’s health care system broke along party lines, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas was one of the few Democratic senators who sided with Republicans when she said she couldn’t support a government-run insurance program.

► The Verizon-Alltel merger that closed in January altered the telecom landscape as Allied Wireless Communications Corp., formed from divested Alltel assets, announced it would establish its headquarters in Little Rock. Also emerging in Little Rock after the merger were Westrock Capital Partners LLC, formed by former Alltel CEO Scott Ford, and the Circumference Group, formed by former Alltel Chief Operating Officer Jeff Fox.

► Stephens Media LLC and Walter E. Hussman’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Inc. ended a northwest Arkansas newspaper war with a merger plan that effectively turned Stephens’ daily papers in Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville into zoned editions of the Democrat-Gazette, which had launched an incursion into the area a decade earlier.

► As the recession continued, Arkansas schools, roads and more were the beneficiaries of a taxpayer-backed financial windfall after President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act.

► The federal government also stepped up investment in the nation’s financial community, and a dozen Arkansas-based lenders participated in the $250 billion Capital Purchase Program.

► Already facing a $10.6 million repair bill and $18 million in lost revenue after an epic ice storm, Southwestern Electric Power Co. also had to make the case for massive rate hikes while fighting environmental challenges to the $2.1 billion coal-burning power plant it was building in southwest Arkansas.