Riverside Bank Sale Set at $10M

A Google Street View image of the Riverside Bank building in Little Rock (© Google)

Plans are in motion for new investors to enter the ownership picture at Sparkman’s Riverside Bank through a $10.1 million transaction. The proposed deal is a combination of $9.1 million cash and $1 million stock.

The would-be buyer of the $60.2 million-asset lender is a new bank holding company under formation: Oak Tree Financial Corp. Inc.

The venture is led by Conner Eldridge, who will fill the roles of chairman and CEO.

The Oak Tree effort represents a return to banking for Eldridge, who worked from 2004-2010 at Summit Bank in Arkadelphia, owned by his father-in-law, Ross Whipple.

Eldridge was vice chairman and CEO of the $1.1 billion-asset bank when he left for a five-year stint as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.

Since 2010, his career path has traveled the legal profession with the notable diversion of an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2016. Eldridge helped establish the Rogers law firm of Eldridge Brooks Partners in 2018 as a founding partner.

An equity offering of up to $20 million will fund the purchase and build the bank’s capital for growth.

Intentions are to open a loan production office in Rogers that will be later converted to a full-service branch followed by a future location in the Fayetteville-Johnson area.

Payday & History

Ownership of Riverside is divided among a trio of shareholders: David Matchet, 50% worth $5.05 million; Stephen Davis, CEO, 47% worth nearly $4.75 million; and Bill Tranum, 3% worth $303,000.

Plans call for Davis to join Oak Tree Financial and for Riverside president Robert Dudley to stay aboard at the bank.

Founded in January 1916 as Merchants & Planters Bank, the financial institution was renamed Riverside Bank in May 2001.

That new name followed the 1995 acquisition of the then $9.9 million-asset bank by a group of Little Rock investors that included Matchet, Walter Quinn III and Lex Golden.

The $741,458 purchase included the injection of $381,000 into the Sparkman bank to pay off a loan from Little Rock’s First Commercial Bank.

In the wake of the transaction, Golden became president and CEO of the Dallas County lender with the focus of its business activity shifting to Little Rock.

Back in 1995, almost 97 percent of Sparkman Bancshares was sliced into five blocks of stock controlled by four Sparkman area residents.

The two biggest blocks were owned by Tyrol “Kit” Carson, chairman, president and CEO of Sparkman Bancshares, 50.9 percent worth $456,071; and the Tyrol Q. Carson IRA, 16 percent worth $143,929.