
Editor’s note: This article is part of a special magazine celebrating 40 years of Arkansas Business. The full magazine is available here.
Here to stay
In August 1983, as business journals were sprouting up in cities all over America, I had an idea for a statewide business journal. I interviewed several executives, sold some advertising and set a publishing schedule that was quickly approaching.
Full of youthful determination and a great elevator speech, I approached Alan Leveritt’s office unannounced. He had driven a cab at night to bootstrap the Arkansas Times. He could advise a 23-year-old daily newspaper editor on how to start a newspaper.
Through his office manager, Alan relayed that he had no time. “Fine. Tell him I’ll send him a copy after I publish my first issue of Arkansas Business.”
Alan offered me 15 minutes. Two hours later, we had a handshake agreement to form a new publishing company. I sold him on Arkansas Business; he sold me on a partnership.
I had been a reporter and editor in Warren, Jacksonville and Greenville, Mississippi. Now I had reluctantly agreed to become the publisher and chief ad salesman. Alan insisted that I had to “sell the dream” to others.
Over the next few months, we asked executives to invest in and support our idea. My pitch was that business was as exciting as politics and sports, but the dailies gave scant attention. Arkansas was full of entrepreneurs with great stories. I talked about my idea for a “Whispers” column — “insider” tidbits, well-founded rumors and news nuggets.
We raised $80,000. With a staff of four, we launched Arkansas Business as a biweekly tabloid newspaper in March 1984.
The newspaper struggled to be taken seriously in its first months until we got a tip that Paul Simmons of BioPlex International was using a mail-order degree to sell the state government on investing in a new biotech campus. After our exposé in October 1984, the state and Gov. Bill Clinton backpedaled, and the business community and even the dailies gave our new tabloid credit and respect. We were here to stay.

– Dan Owens
Publisher 1984-1986
1984
► First Arkansas Bankstock Corp. became Worthen Banking Corp. just a year after Jack Stephens and his brother, W.R. “Witt” Stephens, joined Indonesian banker Mochtar Riady in buying control of the holding company.
► Construction in Little Rock enjoyed a record-breaking year.
► FirstSouth Federal Savings & Loan of Pine Bluff formed a new holding company, FirstSouth Corp., making it one of the top three financial institutions in the state.
► The trial for the 1982 consolidation lawsuit involving the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County school districts began.

► Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association, led by James McDougal, opened its Little Rock branch March 19, the same day Arkansas Business made its debut.
► News of plant closings hit hard in Arkansas. The biggest development came when three major textile mills, two in Osceola and one in Morrilton, announced Oct. 19 that they would close and put about 1,800 people out of work.
► Gov. Bill Clinton defeated Republican former Gov. Frank White for a third term.

► The Arkansas Gazette accused the Arkansas Democrat of unfair trade practices in a federal antitrust lawsuit filed Dec. 12. Later that month, Carrick Patterson became editor of the Gazette, which was still owned by his family.
1985
► TCBY Inc. stock increased in value by almost 600% and split several times.
► The Capitol Tower office building quickly rose to 40 stories in downtown Little Rock, with Arkansas Power & Light Co. and other tenants anticipating the 1986 opening.

► The 25-story Rogers Building (today known as the Stephens Building) opened in downtown Little Rock and was renamed the FirstSouth Building at Metropolitan Plaza in honor of its two major tenants, FirstSouth Federal Savings & Loan and Metropolitan Bank.

► Sam Walton, founder and chairman of Walmart Stores Inc., was named the richest man in the United States by Forbes, which said he was worth more than $2 billion.
► The Walton family’s Northwest Arkansas Bankshares Inc. (now Arvest Bank Group) bought McIlroy Bank of Fayetteville, the oldest bank in Arkansas, chartered in 1871. Renamed Arvest Bank in 2001, it became the surviving charter of when the Walton family consolidated its bank holdings.
► Worthen Bank & Trust Co. nearly collapsed, then recovered in the same year. Bevill Bresler Schulman, a New Jersey investment firm, went bankrupt while holding $52 million from Worthen, which also had a portfolio of bad loans. Using funds invested by the state of Arkansas, the bank had bought repurchase agreements with the firm only a few days before it collapsed. A $35 million stock issue underwritten by Stephens Inc. infused new capital, and Stephens executive Curt Bradbury took charge of the Worthen turnaround.
► Little Rock continued to get publicity about its securities businesses. Negative comments were printed in The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek did a feature about the large number of bond houses in the city and implied that some of their operations were suspect. Despite the publicity, Securities Commissioner Beverly Bassett maintained that the state’s securities businesses didn’t deserve a bad reputation.
► The Arkansas General Assembly, for the first time in history, passed a major tax program without the governor’s support. Gov. Bill Clinton even vetoed the gasoline tax and the Legislature voted to override it.
► Clinton was voted chairman-elect of the National Governors Association, and national publications continued to mention him as a rising star and potential presidential candidate.
1986
► Gov. Bill Clinton easily beat Frank White for a fourth term. It was the first gubernatorial election for a four-year term because of a change in the Arkansas Constitution.
► The Arkansas Supreme Court went against decades of case law and ruled that revenue bonds could not be issued without a public vote. The ruling shocked the business community, which successfully led the passage of a constitutional amendment.

► Contamination of milk with a suspected cancer-causing pesticide called heptachlor was detected at Arkansas dairies and led to quarantines and substantial losses for the state’s dairy industry.
► The Pines, a 700,000-SF mall, opened in Pine Bluff.
► FirstSouth of Pine Bluff was closed by federal regulators, the biggest closure ever handled by the Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corp. to that point, signaling the beginning nationwide of what The Wall Street Journal would describe as “the worst financial fiasco in the country’s history.”
► The Arkansas Gazette’s antitrust lawsuit against the Arkansas Democrat went to trial, and the Gazette lost a jury decision in March. In October, Gannett Co. bought the Gazette from the Hugh Patterson family for $51 million and launched a full-scale newspaper war against the Democrat.
1987

► Stephens Inc. futures trader John Markle of Little Rock killed his wife, two young daughters and himself after the discovery of an embezzlement scheme that benefited his mother, Oscar-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge.
► Dillard’s Department Stores Inc. continued its aggressive acquisition strategy by teaming up with Edward J. DeBartolo Co. to buy Higbee Co.’s 14 retail stores in the Cleveland-Akron, Ohio, area.
► Three Arkansas development and construction firms filed for protection in bankruptcy court. Fausett & Co., Wengroup and Pickens-Bond represented old — and big — money and had a hand in much of the development of central Arkansas. Both Fausett and Wengroup were victims of FirstSouth’s failure the previous year.
► The stock market crashed Oct. 19, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 508 points, or 22.62%, to 1,738.74. The Monday plunge followed a record 108.35-point decrease the previous Friday. The panic wiped out $560 billion in stock value. Walmart founder Sam Walton’s stock value dropped $1.5 billion on Oct. 19, and his response to the day was, “It’s paper, anyway. It was paper when we started and it’s paper afterward.”

► Farmland values bottom out after a six-year decline.
► Herschel H. Friday, Chris Heller and Walt Paulson of the Friday Eldredge & Clark law firm in Little Rock replaced Philip E. Kaplan and others as attorneys for the Little Rock School District. Kaplan and his team had represented the district since 1982, when the LRSD filed its desegregation suit against the North Little Rock and Pulaski County districts.
1988
► Larry Nichols, marketing director of the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, was fired by ADFA Director Wooten Epes after reports that Nichols placed more than $800 in telephone calls to Nicaraguan Contra leaders, a political consultant and people involved in his personal affairs.
► Voters approved Sunday liquor sales at restaurants in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Hot Springs and Wiederkehr Village.
► Several Arkansas stocks performed well. They included value increases by Dillard Department Stores Inc., 68%; TCBY Enterprises Inc., 46.7%; and J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., 43.1%.
► Gov. Bill Clinton gave an embarrassingly long nominating speech for Michael Dukakis at the Democratic National Convention and later appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson for damage control.
► The Arkansas Business Council, a group of the richest businessmen in Arkansas, issued a report calling for further development of higher education.

► Little Rock’s Park Plaza shopping mall, which had been the state’s first major shopping center in the early 1960s, underwent a $48 million renovation in 1988. University Mall, a block away, had a $15 million makeover, and the $30 million Lakewood Village was built in North Little Rock near McCain Mall.
► First Exchange Corp. fought to enter the Little Rock banking market. The Missouri concern later would be declared insolvent and taken over by federal regulators. Don Chilton, chairman and CEO, and his wife killed themselves in the financial fallout.
1989
► Little Rock businessman Jerry Jones bought “America’s Team,” the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys.

► For the decade of the ’80s, Arkansas stocks had three clear winners in terms of increased annual value: Walmart up 44.9% a year; Dillard’s up 44.3% a year; and Tyson Foods Inc., up 42.5% a year.
► Construction began on Little Rock’s newest upscale neighborhood and golf course, Chenal Country Club.
► Tyson Foods Inc. acquired Holly Farms Inc. of Memphis for $1.5 billion, winning out in a bidding war with ConAgra Inc. of Omaha, Nebraska.

► Stock price performances by Arkansas companies varied widely, from a 63% drop for P.A.M. Transportation Services of Tontitown to a 79.2% increase for Southwestern Energy Co. of Fayetteville. TCBY was up 71.1% for the year.
► First Savings of Arkansas in Little Rock suffered its biggest losses yet, $252.3 million, as the state’s thrifts continued to struggle.
► In downtown Little Rock, mainstay retailer M.M. Cohn closed its doors, Dillard’s closed soon afterward, and Stephens Inc. acquired and moved into the Rogers Building.