Looking back at Alaska Business Monthly.

• Author: Harrington, Susan
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: 30 Years of ABM

In the premiere issue of Alaska Business Monthly, January 1985, First National's Chairman Dan Cuddy (then and now) graced the cover. In 1985, First National was First National Bank of Anchorage--it has since been renamed First National Bank Alaska. Many of the businesses featured (and advertising) in the first issue are still active in Alaska. Some, not. Let's look at First National, Usibelli, Wein, and what else was going on then.

Cover Story

The cover story was entitled "Cuddy's Three C's of Banking: Conservative, Consistent, Cash on Hand." It was a great story by Paul Laird, original editor and one of the magazine's co-founders, about how Chairman Dan Cuddy turned First National into Alaska's most profitable bank by maintaining a conservative loan portfolio and building a strong asset and cash base.

Ironically, the lead to the article referred to more thirty years in the past, then--over sixty years ago now!

"If it seems ironic that Alaska's most profitable banker is also its most conservative, it shouldn't ... Chairman Dan Cuddy started building today's profits more than 30 years ago when he became the bank's president in 1951."

The article is full of business advice from Cuddy--the patriarch of the Alaska banking industry. Here are a few direct quotes from the article, as applicable today as thirty years ago.

"There are two kinds of businesses--ones that are controlled by the shareholders and ones that are controlled by the management. Companies controlled by the management tend to look for immediate returns. Managers are more interested in the short-term aggrandizement of themselves. Companies that are controlled by the stockholders tend to have a longer term outlook on things. They're interested in short-term profits, but they're not vitally interested in them. They're more interested in sustained growth."

"A bank can't expand beyond its capital base or its personnel," Cuddy says. "That's why we've kept our dividends small. If we spent our profits on dividends, we wouldn't have had money for expansion."

"Buying everything instead of leasing space adds to our up-front costs, but it's more economical in the long run," Cuddy says. "We can build our asset base and lower our occupancy costs at the same time."

"We don't worry about the industry or the competition. We figure if we look out for the needs of the community and our employees, the return to stockholders will take care of itself."

Usibelli Coal

Another story was about Usibelli...