Warren Stephens, Mike Huckabee Take Diplomatic Posts, Disclose Financial Holdings

Warren Stephens (Karen E. Segrave); Mike Huckabee (File photo)

It’s no secret that Little Rock financier Warren A. Stephens gave a couple of million dollars last year to political action committees associated with candidate Donald Trump.

Or that Stephens was the single largest individual donor to victorious Trump’s inauguration fund, with a $4 million gift just in time for the president-elect to announce Stephens’ nomination to be ambassador to the Court of St. James — aka, the United Kingdom.

He gave up his position as CEO of Stephens Inc. in January, naming sons Miles and John as co-CEOs and daughter Laura Brookshire as senior executive vice president and chair of the executive committee.

He gave up his seat on the Dillard’s Inc. board of directors (and forfeited restricted stock that would have vested this month). He resigned from the boards of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Episcopal Collegiate Foundation and the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank.

The position to which he was confirmed on April 29 also required him to give up a lot of the opacity that has been part of the Stephens DNA. As one business observer noted, a 17-page letter to the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser regarding “Ethics Undertakings” is “arguably the most transparent window into the activities of Stephens that we have ever had,” despite having no dollar signs attached.

The March 21 letter is entirely too much to publish in Whispers, so we set up a link at arkansasbusiness.com/stephensletter for your lunchtime perusal. Prepare to learn of hundreds of business entities in which Ambassador Stephens has — or had until recently — a personal financial interest. They range from tiny LLCs to household names like Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and United Parcel Service.

Stephens will retain ownership but give up decision-making for scores of entities related to the business empire that his uncle, Witt Stephens Sr., and father, Jack Stephens, founded. He pledged to divest from some 300 other companies.

Among them: J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale and Montrose Environmental Group Inc. of North Little Rock.

Huckabee Disclosed

A similar ethics disclosure by former Gov. Mike Huckabee before his confirmation as ambassador to Israel is available at arkansasbusiness.com/huckabeeletter.

His March 5 letter fills six pages and is far less complicated than billionaire Stephens’.

Huckabee resigned from some positions and pledged to essentially freeze his work on various other projects upon confirmation, which happened on April 9. Among the projects he put on hold is “a book unrelated to my duties” as ambassador, for which he has received an advance from HarperCollins Publishers LLC.

He also pledged to divest shares in 14 companies, including Tyson Foods.