John T. Oliver, Jr. knows intimately the road less traveled.
In the early 1980s the son of John Thomason Oliver, M.D. and Sara Crumpton Oliver chose to lead his beloved First National Bank of Jasper off the beaten financial path as the key player in the formation of a bank holding company, and in doing so carved for himself a place in the wall of financial greats in Alabama history.
John Thomason Oliver, Jr. was born April 19, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama. Growing up in Tuscaloosa, he attended Tuscaloosa High School and the Marion Institute, then college at The University of Alabama, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1949. Three years later he followed that with a UA law degree – and marriage November 4, 1952, to Barbara Bankhead of Jasper. Together the couple would raise five children: sons John Thomason Oliver III and William Bankhead Oliver, and daughters Melissa Oliver, Beth Oliver Lehner, and Rebecca Oliver Haines.
After a term with the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps from June 1952 to December 1954, John began the next year as vice president of the First National Bank of Jasper. Almost four and a half decades later he still keeps the statement of condition reflecting the bank’s total assets as of that long-ago January 1, 1955: $9,793,853. That he has done so is reflective of the attention he has paid to detail and organization throughout his successful career. Another reflection is the statement of the bank’s total assets as of January 1, 1998: $443,927,380.
One of the early details John paid attention to was personally knowing each of his customers by name. That commitment and dedication to the bank, a part of the North Alabama mining community of Jasper since 1905, soon earned him the job of president, a position he assumed in December 1958. As president, John firmly believed it was his responsibility to provide the most sophisticated financial services available to his customers. His determination to provide top-notch service intensified as he was elected chief executive officer of the bank in January 1967.
While John Oliver was leading his community bank to financial success during the 1970s, he also found time to begin serving his state as a member of the Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama. John joined the Board in 1971 and is still on it today. Among his accomplishments during his more than 25 years of service to education have been his leadership of the search for a president for the Tuscaloosa campus in 1995, his three terms of service as president pro tern of the Board, and his tenure as interim chancellor of the entire University of Alabama system, 1996-1997. In that unpaid position, he oversaw the $1.3 billion, three-campus system and coordinated its academic, legal, and financial operations. His civic duties were not performed solely in the education arena, however; over the years he has been a leader in such organizations as the Jasper Area Chamber of Commerce, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Jasper, Central Alabama United Way, and the Warrior-Tombigbee Development Association, and was one of the originators of the concept of the Walker Area Community Foundation. He now serves as president and director of that foundation, which at his suggestion was begun with an initial endowment of $6 million from the proceeds of the sale of Walker Regional Medical Center to Baptist Health System in 1995.
But it was in the early 1980s that John Oliver made the tough – and at the time fairly radical – decisions that would later define him as so much more than a solid, successful community banker and leader. The financial industry at the time was turbulent with consolidation and deregulation, and John found himself worried about the future of his bank; Walker County and the city of Jasper were slowing down economically. Determined to increase his institution’s value rather than to allow it to slide in performance and growth, instead of following the banking pack John took that road less traveled and in 1983 formed a holding company: First National Jasper Corp., anchored by the First National Bank of Jasper.
“We were making 1.7 or 1.8 on assets, our capital position was very strong, and we had over half the market,” John Oliver told American Banker in the late ’80s. “But we were worried about whether we would be big enough to offer the new products and generate the non-interest income necessary in the future … It was either do something or sell. We came up with, I think, the best of both worlds.”
The initial plan was to use available funds from the Jasper bank for loans through newly founded subsidiary banks in high-growth markets in Alabama. Along with helping the new subsidiaries get off the ground, that would bring a higher return on First National’s available funds. In June 1985 First National Jasper Corp. changed its name to First Commercial Bancshares, Inc., and in September 1985 a first took place in Alabama banking: the opening by a bank holding company of a de novo bank, First Commercial Bank in Birmingham. Two more de novo banks were opened in the late ’80s, The Bank of Tuscaloosa in 1988 and Sterling Bank in Montgomery in 1989. But even as the company continued to grow, John Oliver remained focused on preserving the community aspect of banking that had served him – and his customers – so well over the years. “Ours is a relationship strategy for banking, not a pricing or a marketing strategy,” he said.
That strategy played out nicely as the holding company continued to grow, adding First Commercial Bank in Huntsville, and perform well – during this period, First Commercial Bancshares was recognized as one of” America’s Best Banks” by Financial World. Such accolades and the bottom line attracted the attention of potential partner Synovus Financial Corp., and in April 1992, John Oliver seized the opportunity to merge his $865 million company with Synovus, increasing that concern’s assets to $5 billion when the merger was completed in December. As part of the transition, First Commercial Bancshare retained the names of its banks, and John Oliver was named chairman and chief executive officer of Synovus Financial Corp. of Alabama. His financial expertise and leadership during the merger earned him the prestigious position of vice-chairman of the executive committee of Synovus two years later, at which time he also became chairman of First National Bank of Jasper.
John Oliver could boast of many things he has accomplished. But boast he does not. Instead, he will turn the conversation to his wife and their fondness for another unbeaten path, one that led them physically out of the country to southern Ireland, where they built a home overlooking the Irish Sea. “The Irish are gentle, quiet people,” John said. “They love to talk, and they love Americans. I tell them that just as in Ireland, the best part of our country is the South.”
John Oliver, too, is a gentleman, in every sense of the word. And history will remember kindly this community banker who chose the road less traveled – and in doing so made all the difference.
