Talk:First National Bank Alaska

Bank history/lineage

I've long been interested in the history and lineage of Alaska's financial institutions, as many of them failed and/or merged during the late 1980s and we've acknowledged precious little of that, or most of any other prior history for that matter. I came across a Federal Reserve website which contained useful information. I'm not 100 percent convinced that it's complete. Here's what I came up with:

• The First National Bank of Anchorage – founded 1922, changed to current name 2001
  • First National Bank (Juneau) – founded 1898, acquired 1962
  • First Bank of Valdez – founded 1901, acquired 1970
  • First Federal Bank of Alaska (Anchorage) – founded 1955 as First Federal Savings and Loan Association, changed from S&L to bank 1983, acquired 1990 after failure
    • Arctic First Federal Savings and Loan Association (Fairbanks) – founded 1958, acquired 1981
    • Peninsula Savings and Loan Association (Soldotna) – founded 1979, acquired 1986 after failure
    • Frontier Savings and Loan Association (Fairbanks) – founded 1982, acquired 1987 after failure

Anything missing from this? I know that FNBA aggressively expanded throughout Alaska in the early years of statehood, when the Cuddys joined with the Rasmusons in lobbying the legislature to allow for branch banking. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 12:12, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

One thing I'm pretty sure I missed. It's far from the greatest source, but it is a third-party source. Anchorage Place Names by Rae Arno mentioned that Winfield Ervin was an employee of the Brown & Hawkins Store, who had established a branch in Anchorage following its founding. She further mentioned that Ervin founded the bank at their behest when deposits became too much to handle at the store, as it was common for merchants to engage in ad hoc banking back in those days. The impression I get is that the B. M. Behrends Bank in Juneau started in more or less the same fashion. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 01:55, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Sources

@Akbankerfan907: and @Beeblebrox:, since it appears that the two of you were involved with something which started on my user talk page that came and went before I had time to do anything about it. (No) thanks to Serial Number 54129 for assuming that I didn't need to be bothered. First off, these other editors appear to be lecturing Akbankerfan907 about reliable sources without offering any help or specific pointers. The notes I previously left above are from my research and refer to sources, which the other editors appear to be discounting out of hand because there is no clickbait attached to any of it, part of the ongoing effort on here to push low-quality web sources. In late 2015, when I had a lot more time to do so, I concatenated material related to Alaska from a database on the Federal Reserve website, the results of which can be found at User:RadioKAOS/Sandbox/Misc/Alaska Financial Institutions. As there has been no collaboration occurring and most everyone on Wikipedia these days are too busy regurgitating whatever the news media is pushing today, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. If there is a sincere effort afoot to improve this article, here are some pointers. Alaska Business Monthly and the Alaska Journal of Commerce are probably the best journalistic sources covering the Alaska business world. When perusing those sources, however, care should be given to emphasize pieces which provide substantial coverage and information or journalistic value, rather than short blurbs which reprint press releases. Also, the Cook Inlet Historical Society's website contains an Anchorage biography project, including bios on Warren Cuddy and Dan Cuddy. These bios contain a substantial list of references, many relevant to the bank's history. The UAA library holds the Lucy Cuddy papers, which no doubt contain pointers to other sources. As the above source shows, FNBA had its roots in the Brown & Hawkins store. It's entirely possible that the store's NRHP documentation contains some clues pertaining to the bank's early days. Hope this helps. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 01:56, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

@RadioKAOS: Thanking you for your lack of faith there. It was clearly a fat-thumbed rollback: and that is the purpose of my talk page, for asking me "WTF, SN?". Feel free to do so in future should you need to, or, indeed, for the hell of it. And feel free to remain down on the canyon with your back to the sea. ——SerialNumber54129 03:24, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Messing with my talk page when there was no need is something that should just be ignored or whitewashed? Maybe when I have time to archive everything, I'll go through and clean up the other times it's happened with other editors. Anyway, sorry, but as you can see here, my focus was not on appearances but on responding to the request for resources to improve the article. As I'm not sure the requesting editor will be back because they made the mistake of revealing a possible affiliation/COI, I'll put it on the list. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:39, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

The first thing you should do is find out if someone has "been messing", or had just made a mistake, yes. Good work with this article though. Do you like a tough game, no rules. Some you win, some you lose:) ——SerialNumber54129 03:50, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

@RadioKAOS: Thank you for the response to the initial inquiry! It is, indeed, a genuine one, and done so with full respect to the protocols and issues associated with any conflict of interest. The goal was to find out how the article might be improved, and your recommendations are great. Hopefully others in the community will take an interest in making the suggested edits as this article evolves. Much appreciated. Akbankerfan907 (talk) 19:59, 6 November 2018 (UTC)Akbankerfan907

@RadioKAOS: Started to add some additional historical information, starting with how Cuddy first became involved in the banking business. Plan to add more soon! Thanks for the the recommended resources above — fascinating stuff! Justacmeism (talk) 18:45, 3 January 2019 (UTC)justacmeism