Stephens Inc., which launched a multimedia series in May dedicated to bolstering the image of capitalism, is focusing on one of its own — Jack Stephens — in its latest short film in the series.
The film, part of "This Is Capitalism," features Stephens CEO Warren Stephens describing Jack, his father, as essentially the creator of private equity.
Certainly he was an Arkansas investing pioneer. The film describes how Jack Stephens abandoned his young man's dream of going to Wall Street, choosing instead to join his brother Witt in Little Rock to build Stephens Inc. into an investment banking giant. Within a few decades of his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1946, Stephens was making millions by betting on young Arkansans who are now household names in the business world: Sam Walton, Don Tyson and Joe T. Ford, to name a few.
"World War II had just ended, and there was a substantial economic boom," Warren Stephens says in the film, which can be found at thisiscapitalism.com. "Dad was planning to go to Wall Street and get a job. The decision to go back to Little Rock does seem obvious in hindsight, but there was a lot of risk professionally in his career to do that."
One of Jack Stephens' innovations was taking his brother's business, which dealt in bonds, and going into equities, investing in regional companies and building up a capital management business.
"He was a venture capitalist before anybody knew that term," said Joe T. Ford, the co-founder of Verizon Wireless forerunner Alltel and a beneficiary of Stephens' guidance. "He would put his money side by side with you in a business."
Some of that money went into a 1968 purchase of an early mainframe computer, a venture that gave birth to Systematics, later called Alltel Information Services. In time, the investment led to a billion-dollar return. In the meantime, Stephens helped take a little-known Arkansas company public. That was Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and the rest is capitalist history.
"He later told me, Joe, most of the money that I've made in my career I've made by betting on people," Ford says in the film. "He bet on Sam Walton at Wal-Mart. He bet on Don Tyson at Tyson Foods. He was a great judge of people, and I think he did make a lot of money by betting on people."
But he always kept his heart in Arkansas, the film's narrator says, leading the rescue of Worthen Bank in the 1980s and "preserving the savings of families across the state."
Warren Stephens, the force behind the film series, was estimated by Forbes in 2016 to have a fortune of $2.4 billion. He owes much of that success to his father, he says, not just for building up the family business but by offering him great advice.
"I learned from Dad the importance of hard work," Warren says on camera. "You work hard every day, you go home with your reputation intact, and you come back the next morning and have a chance to be successful."
With that, the film series slogan appears onscreen: "This Is Capitalism."