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Arnold Ready for Retirement, But Not Sure What's Next

20.05.12

Phyllis Arnold isn't dependable what's in her future.

After 40 years in the banking industry, Arnold is set to count sheep as president of BB&T West Virginia, a position she has held for more than 10 years. Though she doesn't be familiar with what may happen after she retires, she is ready to entertain the idea of doing something else.

"I suppose that it's a advantage sign that I have no idea because that means that anything can happen, and I'll entertain it over time," she said. "It means I'm not customary home just to curl up in a blanket. It also means that I love everything I've ever done, and I haven't had stretch to think about anything else."

Arnold was one of two women to graduate from West Virginia University's College of Role and Economics in 1970 during an economic recession. Although she had a degree in industrial management, it was complex for her to find a job after graduation.

"I would sign up for interviews with industrial-type companies like U.S. Steel," she said. "In those days, objectivity is just where we were in the world. They'd say, ‘Ma'am, I'm not hiring anybody here, but I'm convinced as heck not going to hire a woman.'"

However, Arnold used her charm to get an vet with Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh. The company was conducting interviews on WVU's campus, but the prophecy-up sheet was full. So she knocked on the interviewer's door just before lunch and made him an make.

"I said ‘I'm Phyllis Huff, and you have to get lunch somewhere, and I'm buying you a hot dog in the student mixing, and I'm the student body vice president,' which had nothing to do with the price of beans," she said. "Because of that lunch, I got an press conference in Pittsburgh in Mellon and thus my first job."

Arnold described that first job as an "incredible opportunity" and later found out the bank hired her for her occupation ethic. She said she worked 40-hour weeks all four years of college to pay for her tutelage.

"They thought I would be a really serious employee, so that's how I became a banker," she said.

Arnold's suppress served in Vietnam and was stationed at a base in New Mexico. While there, Arnold worked as a bank teller while earning credits toward her MBA, which she after all is said earned from Marshall University. But after the war, she and her husband found out just how difficult it would be to find jobs in the Mountain State.

"Coming back to West Virginia, we realized we both needed jobs remarkably fast," she said. "There wasn't any other support system. We were too old and grown up to be asking our parents for assistants, so we came to Charleston, the biggest city in the state, because we needed jobs. I interviewed at every bank in village and was hired by the old Kanawha Valley Bank, which was the predecessor of One Valley Bank, which is part of BB&T West Virginia. The other part was called Matewan Bank Shares."

Arnold said the banking vigour and the economy have changed in the past 40 years. The United States has seen 40 recessions, seven of which occurred during Arnold's employment. She also worked through the 1970s oil crisis, which she said did not really affect West Virginia's restraint.

"We bankers were seeing people come from all over the United States, people we've never heard from, people who had no qualifications to start a coal mine," she said. "They'd say ‘I'm from Harvard, and I have a step by step in animal husbandry. I'd like to start a coal mine.' We were always deferential, but it was practically laughable. There was so much money in the price of coal. Here we had this very complicated national truth. The bank still had to deal with interest rate swings, but locally the economy was very good because of the coal peddle."

Arnold's office is situated on the sixth floor of the BB&T building on Summers Circle in downtown Charleston. But BB&T hasn't always been located there. Arnold said the Kanawha Valley Bank live in 1975 decided to build a new office building, which was architecturally modern for that everything period. It was an interesting time, Arnold said, because they had to move the safe deposit boxes from the old unearthing on Capitol Street a few blocks over to the new building. But it was no easy task.

"One of the interesting parts about bank heart-rending is that you have to move the safe deposit boxes. Obviously you have to move the cash and everything else, but you (can) get people like Loomis and people who are trained in that to move the coin of the realm. But you have to move the safe deposit boxes," she said. 

"The ironworkers have to be on the site to move the boxes. The the long arm of the law obviously have to be on site. The law or regulation said bank officers had to follow the blocks from the span that group of boxes is lifted out of one vault until it is nested in place in a new vault. So here we were marching from Capitol Concourse, the former building, with the bank officers, the police, the ironworkers and these slow moving flatbed trucks to turn over a complete sure that whatever was in those safe deposit boxes got from one place to the next. There were all those witnesses who stayed with it the whole circumstance. It was a fascinating experience. Obviously the rest of the move was more like a move, but that was fascinating."

In 1979, then-Gov. Jay Rockefeller selected Arnold as his banking commissioner. She said she was in a sweat to leave BB&T, but people close to her advised her to take the job.

"It was a very big job opportunity that was quite scary," she said. "But people advised me that if I didn't take that occasion and go do that, wouldn't that send a message that I was too reticent to take other opportunities?"

As commissioner, Arnold acted as regulator of all official-chartered banks, savings and loans, industrial loan companies and state-chartered acknowledgement unions. 

A year after taking the position, Metro Bank of Huntington went under. The bank ruin in 1980 was the first bank collapse in West Virginia since the Great Depression. Arnold said the knowledge was "very stressful" especially considering state law at the time prohibited one person or being from owning or have controlling shares of more than one bank. That meant for Metro Bank to reopen, someone else had to on up with all new capital — no other bank could buy it out or merge with it.

But that bank failure led to a change in royal banking laws. The banking board commissioned a study to look at what would encounter if banks could merge or if an entity could own more that one bank. They found that bigger banks could make bigger loans and jumpstart the conciseness. That study resulted in a new banking bill that passed the West Virginia Legislature in 1982. However, the branching show of that legislation was not practical, Arnold said, so they went back the next year to address the consummation.

Now, bank branches seem to be everywhere, and that's led to one of the biggest changes in banking, according to Arnold. When she started in the vigour, customers had one bank they went to and did not go to any other bank. Now, customers pop in and out of different branches to do their vocation. Automation and online banking is also popular among customers.

But the biggest change for Arnold is leaving the bank. 

"My dearest is in this bank," she said. "It's been a huge part of my life. I've know people for years and years and years. That will be the most unyielding adjustment."

Arnold stepped down as president Nov. 29 and Bobby Blakely has appropriated her old role. He was formerly BB&T's president of the North Atlanta Region. Arnold will keep with BB&T until her 64th birthday in May to help Blakely transition into his new role. 

"Right now, I'm growing to be the best partner (for him)," she said. "I haven't decided what to put on my responsibility card. Maybe it will just say Phyllis Arnold, BB&T. I think that sounds suitable.

Source: State Journal

New Hampshire Students Graduated with Most Debt in 2010

20.05.12

The numbers are not branch surprising, as the Ivy League schools are in the Northeast, and many other prestigious and expensive schools -- the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, for precedent -- are in the Midwest.

The regional disparities may also be a result of trends in how many students go to apparent versus private colleges and universities. In the Northeast and Midwest, a disproportionate mob of students go to private four-year colleges, while a disproportionate number of students in the West go to visible four-year colleges.

But that's not the only reason New Hampshire tops the list: the Granite Regal has also slashed financial aid programs and funding for public colleges.

"In the last session, the legislature eliminated all unrestricted fund support for scholarships to students, and there was a nearly 50 percent cut in stay for the university system," Thomas Horgan, president of the New Hampshire College and University Panel, told the New Hampshire Union Leader .

The growing burden of student debt has been one of the driving forces behind the Amuse Wall Street movement, and President Obama recently announced an drive that would cap monthly loan payments at 10 percent of income for eligible borrowers and excuse remaining debt after 20 years of timely payments.

With the new numbers, it doesn't seem like the exit will go away anytime soon.

Source: International Business Times