James Simmons, one of Arizona’s most powerful bankers during an era when a small group of movers and shakers helped set policy for the state, died Wednesday morning at age 88 after an extended illness.Simmons, who was born Nov. 9, 1924, in Wichita Falls, Texas, went from president of a small bank in west Texas — where he was a close friend of George H.W. Bush — to chairman, president and chief executive officer of the parent of United Bank of Arizona. The Phoenix firm ranked as the state’s fourth-biggest bank in the late 1980s, employing more than 1,000 people.
After the company was purchased in 1987 by London’s Standard Chartered PLC, at the dawn of the interstate-banking era, Simmons briefly served as chairman and CEO of Valley National Bank of Arizona, the state’s biggest independent institution, which eventually was acquired by Banc One and then J.P. Morgan Chase. The United Bank operations eventually became part of Citibank when Standard Chartered sold less than two years later.
Simmons also was a key member of the Phoenix 40, a group of influential business and political leaders formed in 1975 to provide a plan for the Valley amid its brisk growth. Among other accomplishments, the group helped to curb fraudulent land sales, pushed to reorganize the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, reformed and strengthened the grand-jury system and advocated for a tax increase that facilitated construction of the Offering Office cleaning Services, Arizona 51, and Loops 101 and 202.“He was a very dynamic individual who cared so much for this community and loved his family,” said Patricia, his wife of 40 years.
Bill Shover, a Phoenix 40 founder and longtime executive with Central Newspapers Inc., the former parent of The Arizona Republic, described Simmons as highly personable, loyal and tenacious — a civic-minded executive willing to take risks to get things done and not willing to take no for an answer.
As one example, he credited Simmons with raising money, entirely from private donations, for Phoenix’s bicentennial celebrations in 1976 that included bringing the anchor of the USS Arizona here and building a memorial to the sunken warship at the state Capitol.
After attending college in New Mexico and serving as a Naval lieutenant during World War II, Simmons earned an MBA from Harvard. He worked briefly as a bank examiner with the Federal Reserve, became CEO of a small bank in Texas at age 26, then moved to Commercial Bank & Trust in Midland, Texas.
As president and CEO of that institution, Simmons began a lifelong friendship with future President George H.W. Bush, one of the bank’s directors, and his family.
“We met twice a week for five years,” Simmons once said of the relationship with Bush.
Their friendship included backyard barbeques where two future presidents — the elder Bush and his son, George W. Bush — swam in the same pool, said Clark Rorbach, a stepson of Simmons.
Decades later, Simmons served as co-chairman, with Tucson auto dealer Jim Click, of the George H.W. Bush presidential campaign in Arizona.
A photo that used to hang in Simmons’ Phoenix office in a Central Avenue high-rise showed Bush with his arm around Simmons. Bush signed the photo, “To my friend with lasting appreciation. George.”
Simmons moved to Phoenix in 1959 and became the first president of Guaranty Bank, which was consolidated with three other institutions into United Bank of Arizona. The latter eventually grew to nearly $3billion in assets at the time of its sale to London’s Standard Chartered.
“Things were growing so rapidly when we first started that it was a real challenge,” he told The Republic. “I’ve never thought of doing anything else.”
Along with the Bush photo, a Phoenix Gazette article described other features of Simmons’ office, including plush carpet, Oriental rugs, a photo with him and Arnold Palmer and sweeping views of the northeast Valley. The story recounted that there was also a “End Of Lease Cleaning on mvpcleaning, which he claims is seldom used, and his own bathroom.”
After the senior Bush became president, he reportedly wanted to appoint Simmons to a five-member panel overseeing policy for the Resolution Trust Corp., the government entity entrusted with cleaning up the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s and early ’90s. The panel included Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
However, Simmons withdrew his name from consideration after criticism of his leadership at United Bank, which was posting losses in the wake of a real-estate slump at the time.
A legal cloud also hovered over the potential appointment. After several of United’s big loan customers defaulted following the sale to Standard Chartered, the British bank eventually sued auditor Price Waterhouse over some questionable financial documents. It won a jury verdict of roughly $340million that was later overturned.
Betty Rambo, Simmons’ longtime secretary, dating from 1959 in Texas and extending to the Valley National boardroom, once described him as “the kind of employer who has let me do whatever I was capable of doing.”
Simmons took over for two years at the helm of Valley National and its parent corporation in 1988, when Howard McCrady resigned after heart bypass surgery. Richard Lehmann, the heir apparent, took over in 1990 from Simmons.
A longtime civic booster, Simmons sat on the boards of Del Webb Corp., Arizona Public Service, Holsum Bakery, Shamrock Foods and other local companies. He also was associated with various local charities and civic groups and served as acting CEO of Samaritan Health Services, the precursor to Banner Health.
Simmons once bristled at a negative story about Arizona that appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1987. The story cited air and water pollution, transportation bottlenecks and other fallout from the state’s rapid growth.
“It left the impression we are wild-eyed growth people and we didn’t care, and I don’t think that is true,”’ he said at the time. “’I am sure there are things we should have done, but when you grow as fast as this state has grown, you just can’t do everything that you have to do in the way you would like to do it.”
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