The Wit and Wisdom of Johnny Allison
November 20, 2013 11:00 PM
The 66-year-old chairman of Home BancShares in Conway, Ark., sure does tell it like it is. Here are some of his more colorful quotes and the stories we enjoyed most.
Feeling ill will in his heart towards goodwill on the balance sheet
"In the old days, you used to just write it off, write it off over 30 years. You don't do that anymore. Now, if you put goodwill on your books, it will be here when Jesus comes back."
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Once burned, twice shy
Any loan over $1 million in Florida, I personally get involved in. I fly down, meet the customer, have dinner, we talk. Not that Im any genius, I just want to know who Im doing business with. Look them in the eye. Thats a result of getting my butt kicked in Florida.
On quality capital
"When you look at Home BancShares' balance sheet, there is not a lot of crap on there
.
"The truth is most banks have junk on their balance sheet. They got trust-preferred, they got Small-Business Lending, they got TARP, they got all this funny money capital, we call it. And I went to work immediately. Paid my TARP off, came back and had about $30 million of trust-preferred, I'm now down to about $2 million of trust-preferred left. I cleaned up my balance sheet .
"We got the junk outta the trunk."
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On his expectations
"'No' is not acceptable here. 'Yes, sir, I'll get it done' - although you don't have to call me 'sir.'"
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Ever so friendly with consultants
"These are consultants from out of town with their briefcases and coats and ties. I said 'I don't trust you guys.'
"But we hired them. I told them, 'If you do a good job, I'll tell the world. If you do a piss poor job, I'll tell them that, too.'
The initial skepticism aside, Allison credits the consulting firm Metavante with helping Home lower its efficiency ratio by more than 16 percentage points since 2007.
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On being clueless at first
Allison, whose background is in the mobile home business, got into banking in the early 80s, after being invited to join the board of a small local bank. In short order, he bought the bank and became chairman, only to discover it had regulatory issues.
"I didn't know what I was buying. I got a call. 'The regulators just gave us an MOU.' I said, 'That's a good thing, right?' 'No, John, It isn't.'"
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Staying away from Texas for now
"When oil is $50 a barrel, I'll lend into Texas. I'm not going to do it with oil at $110 a barrel and watch it go to $50. Because I saw it when it was at $50 and went to $10 and the whole state exploded."
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On the outsized pricing expectations of sellers
"They want to get it all today," Allison says. "My shareholders didn't get it all today-they got it after riding with Johnny for 15 years."
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'D' as in dead wrong
Allison has not stopped selling since the age of 13, when he got $1,000 over invoice for a mobile home while helping out at his father's business. So when a college professor gave him a "D" on a paper he wrote about how to sell mobile homes, he was miffed.
"I looked at him - he was about seven-feet tall, about 12 pounds, and couldn't sell sex on a troop train. I thought, 'How can you judge me?'"
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On why bankers are like college professors
"No disrespect to bankers, but most of them have never had any business experience. They will tell you how to run your business and what you need to do, but they have never been in the foxhole before."
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On the excess he saw at failed Florida banks
"They had these three- or four-story buildings. And everyone needed a marquee. A doublewide would have been fine. We have a couple of doublewide branches. We do it for a couple of years and then go brick and mortar if we like it and want to."
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On the Troubled Asset Relief Program
"I'm not sure we weren't right on the edge of the whole country collapsing. TARP gets a bad reputation, but I think it was a good thing to have done."
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On meeting his wife
"I was at the country club in Conway and she walked by. I asked, 'Who is that?' They told me. She was in the clothing business. I decided my two daughters needed some clothes."
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Johnny on Johnny
"I'm pretty plain spoken. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is not, but it is what it is."
Read more about Allison and all of our 2013 Bankers of the Year
