Mr. May: Simmons First is 107 years old. We were chartered in March of 1903, and we are a multibank holding company, which is a little bit unusual in today's banking world. We have eight banks in our holding company; they are all community banks. And it is the community banking philosophy which we believe will help us differentiate ourselves from our competition. All eight of our banks are located in the state of Arkansas. We have strategically located those banks within each region of the state. We have 75 financial centers or branches doing business in 40 communities around the state. The banks' assets range in size from the smallest at $150 million to the largest of $1,600 million, which is the lead bank. The median size of the eight banks is somewhere between $200 million and $300 million. Our business model differentiation strategy is built around a community banking philosophy; these separate charters are just like stand-alone banks. They have local management teams and their own governing boards, just like a stand-alone bank. To us, it's about community banks and community bankers making community decisions for the local customers. This philosophy has worked very well for us, as we try to compete with some of the large regional banks that are doing business within the state. Likewise, we use Simmons First National Bank, the lead bank, to provide some of the more sophisticated niche products, such as credit cards, trust and student loans. These products and our size allow us to differentiate ourselves from the other really good community banks that are doing business within the state. We have also found that this community banking strategy has worked very well for us relative to the strength of our asset quality. We believe those local boards and local strong management teams do a better job in the area of building and maintaining asset quality than you would if it was centralized in one location.
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