Arkansas Capital

Arkansas Capital is a private, non-profit lending corporation dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs in Arkansas through partnerships with the lending community. Since 1957, Arkansas Capital and its affiliates have helped provide flexible financing products of over $1.5 billion in capital through 1,300+ loans to help meet the needs of customers from small businesses to large scale operations.

The Arkansas Capital Corporation Group, then named First Arkansas Development Finance Corporation (FADFC), was formed in 1957 by influential individuals (Winthrop Rockefeller, John Tyson, Horace Cabe, Harvey Couch Jr., John Ed Chambers, Dave Grundfest, Charles Murphy, Raymond Rebsamen, JA Riggs Jr., McCloud Sicard, EO Yancey, William E Darby, Robert A Young Jr., and Witt Stephens) and most of the state’s utilities. The company was formed to provide a mechanism for financing the state’s transformation from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy.

Since its founding, the company has diversified and grown to include commercial financing needed for the information age. Along the way, ACCG has made hundreds of loans, representing projects of well over $500 million.

The article below by one of Arkansas Capital Corporation’s founders, Herbert L. Thomas, Sr., was first published in the Winter 1960 edition of The Arkansas Economist, a publication of the University of Arkansas’ College of Business Administration.