Meeting the needs of clients with an old school and humble approach
When Argent Trust was voted Oxford’s Best Investment Firm 2024 by Oxford Magazine, Brooks Campany was ecstatic.
Campany, regional manager of Argent Trust in Oxford, wrote to clients: “This recognition is a testament to the trust and support you’ve generously extended to us. And we couldn’t have achieved this milestone in five quick years without you.”
Campany’s father, Kyle McDonald, who founded Argent Financial Group (Argent) in 1991, and remains CEO, was thrilled with the news. His client service mantra from the get-go: humble confidence.
“We’ve been referred to as having an old-school approach to client service, which we fully embrace,” said McDonald. “I felt like there was a place for that, particularly in the South.”
Argent Trust’s Oxford office is one of Argent’s 38 markets across 16 states, collaborating with a team of more than 500 professionals overseeing over $85 billion in client assets, along with three million mineral acres.
“I had no idea the company would grow this big,” said McDonald. “I didn’t want to put limits on what we did, and I also didn’t put unrealistic targets out.”
Humble Beginnings
The story of Argent traces back to 1930, mere months after the devastating stock market crash of 1929, and the onset of the Great Depression, when the trust department of Ruston State Bank (RSB) in Ruston, La., was established.
Several decades later, in 1985, McDonald was practicing law in Baton Rouge. His clerkship involved rewriting banking codes for the State of Louisiana. Later, he focused on mergers and acquisitions. When oil hit rock bottom, he began managing commercial loan workouts for banks.
RSB president Johnny Maxwell recruited McDonald to run the bank’s trust and wealth management department. In one of his first actions as a trust officer, McDonald wrote in a memo to colleagues: “If we elect to provide any service, it must be provided excellently.”
In 1990, The Trust Company of Louisiana was formed from the RSB Trust Department. The following year, wanting to work independently, McDonald led the purchase of the company now known as Argent.
In 2005, Argent expanded into oil and gas mineral management services. Three years later, northwest Louisiana experienced a boon in oil and gas exploration.
In 2007, Campany had graduated from Ole Miss with a finance and marketing degree, and moved to Nashville “somewhat blindly,” she said, with a laugh.
“Some friends and I thought it was a cool city to start a career in,” she said.
Campany’s first job: a banker with the startup Avenue Bank, founded by Ron Samuels, an Ole Miss graduate from Water Valley. “It was the best first job I could’ve asked for,” she said. In the front lines of banking you meet people all day, every day and, consequently, are exposed to a wide variety of businesses and industries. I learned quickly that appearance or even size of an account does not equate to wealth. A lesson that has served me well both in life and my career in wealth management.”
In the meantime, McDonald was eyeing expansion outside the state of Louisiana.
“For the first 19 years, we more or less operated out of Louisiana, which was good for us and gave us a chance to hone our skills and figure out who we were and all those sorts of things,” he said.
In 2009, McDonald noticed Tennessee lawmakers had passed quite favorable, progressive, and flexible trust and estate planning laws. That November, he acquired an independent trust company in Memphis, “the smallest trust company in Tennessee,” noted Campany.
“I got a phone call from my dad,” she said. “Memphis was our first location outside Louisiana. He called to see if I was interested in coming to interview with that team, and then potentially transition from the banking side of the finance industry to the wealth management side.”
Argent hired a team to run the Memphis office from Regions Morgan Keegan before Raymond James acquired it.
“I moved to Memphis and worked for Argent in a role I considered as more of an internship,” Campany said. “I was there for a year before we opened an office in Nashville.”
McDonald hired another team away from Regions Morgan Keegan the day Morgan Keegan sold to Raymond James to form the Nashville office.
Mergers and acquisitions completed in 2013 and 2014 expanded the company’s geographic footprint into South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi, and further grew its portfolio of services. Key additions were Highland Capital Management of Memphis, and San Antonio-based The Trust Company of Texas.
The following year, the company expanded into Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina, and in 2016, acquired Oklahoma City-based Heritage Trust Company, Heritage Institutional Services and Heritage Mineral Management.
Argent’s development continued in 2017, with the opening of an in-house operations center in Birmingham, AL, and carried over into 2018 with the purchase of Independence Trust, a Nashville-based group with a focus on funeral trust services. New trust offices opened in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and New Orleans. In 2019, Argent opened offices in Wilmington, NC, Ridgeland, and Baton Rouge.
Argent continued its growth spree through December 2023, acquiring Louisiana-based institutional asset RIA Orleans Capital Management. Its largest acquisition to date was of TMI Trust Company (now Argent Institutional Trust Company) in the summer of 2023. Each acquisition was strategic to either strengthen an existing Argent service or to expand Argent’sservice offerings in response to its clients’ needs.
The Timing of Oxford
In 2014, Argent moved into Oxford with the merger of Family Wealth Practices, founded in 2008 by Mark Harnett, who had a niche service line focusing on family governance, with clients scattered around the nation.
Four years later, Campany received another call from her dad.
“I’d worked for the team in Nashville for nine years,” she said. “Dad had sent two more daughters to Ole Miss. He and my mom had purchased a home in Oxford and watched the growth of the community and noticed how many Mississippians and other retirees were migrating there. It reminded him of our hometown, Ruston.
“He thought we needed a broader services office here and asked if I’d be willing to move to Oxford. I’d since gotten married and had two kids. So, in the fall of 2018, the four of us moved to Oxford.”
Around the same time, Argent relocated its Oxford address to 613 South Lamar Boulevard in a National Historic Landmark building to accompany staff growth.
“We weren’t starting from a blank slate,” said Campany. “We had a solid foundation.”
Campany expanded the Oxford office alongside Hartnett and Austin B. McCarty, CFP, a trust assistant, now assistant vice president and wealth advisor.
“Coincidentally, my sister’s (Blair Hull) husband had gotten a promotion with his company that required a move to north Mississippi,” she said. “They moved to Oxford a couple of months before we did.”
Hull, president of Argent Foundation, and Argent’s vice president of philanthropic services, manages the company’s donor-advised funds from the Oxford office.
“Blair has a huge heart and a lot of intentionality around the non-profit space,” said Campany. “She works with all of Argent’s clients on fulfilling their charitable desires through tax-efficient ways. As a sister, it’s fun to watch her daily. It could be tricky if she and I were pegged to compete at work. It’s nice that what we do complements each other.”
Usually when a company evolves to a sizeable corporation, its offices appear cookie-cutter.
Not Argent.
“My dad’s vision is unique for this industry,” said Campany. “A lot of autonomy is given to each market, with how it’s marketed and who’s hired to serve as a team. It’s important to him that every client gets good, local service from high-caliber professionals. Our office in Oxford looks different than ours in Dallas.”
Autonomy attracts the cream of the crop, emphasized Campany.
“Our best leaders have entrepreneurial spirits,” she explained. “Dad provided the resources of a sophisticated regional firm to these entrepreneurial professionals.”
Last year, the Oxford office added its seventh and eighth members to the team. In July, a ninth team member was added. Additions include Vince Chamblee, lead portfolio manager for the firm’s Mississippi markets, and Caroline Forks, trust counsel.
“I would put this team up against any other team in Mississippi, or really any team across Argent’s footprint,” said Campany. “Everybody has a focused skill set and strength, and we complement each other. If we get high marks from Argent’s leadership team about the speed in which we’ve attracted clients and assets to manage, I give credit to the foundation that Argent has built for us.”
On the sales side, Campany said the team has attracted “some really large, complex families both in structure and asset composition,” noting there’s no geographic boundary for the Oxford office.
“Ole Miss alumni come here several weekends a year, or have second homes here, and they’ve hired us because they don’t want to use somebody in their hometown for confidentiality reasons,” said Campany.
One of the toughest challenges involves family feuding.
“I get emotional every time I say this, but we see a lot of families where it hasn’t gone very well for the families to work with each other,” said Campany. “Our team is well-trained and has gained a great deal of experience navigating sensitive, but crucial, issues with those families.”
The Nuts and Bolts
Argent Trust is a leading, independent client asset service firm offering wealth management, asset management and trust services for individuals, families, foundations and endowments.
“We’re a true fiduciary,” Campany explained. “There’s no investment decision that we benefit from.”
In addition to trusts and estate planning, Argent’s services for individuals include investment management, oil and gas management, wealth management, special needs trusts, and special asset services. Argent has unique experience in 1031 Like-Kind Exchanges, and farm and ranch management.
For businesses, Argent provides employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), funeral and cemetery trusts, qualified intermediary services, retirement plan consulting, investment management, and oil and gas management.
For institutions, Argent offers corporate trusts, investment management, philanthropic services, custody and escrow services, governmental services, and special assets administration, particularly in the areas of oil and gas management and timberland management.
What’s Next?
“Our focus is on continuing to serve our clients and grow organically,” said McDonald. “We may never do another acquisition. I don’t feel obligated to do so. If the right deal comes along, we’ll take a look. But our chief focus isn’t looking for the next acquisition.”
McDonald, 65, isn’t looking to retire anytime soon. Instead, he may slowly phase himself out.
“As long as I’m healthy and mentally capable, this is a job I can do for a while,” he said. “At the same time, I’m very cognizant that I need to create opportunities for the younger, talented folks that we have in our company to allow them to utilize their gifts and talents.”
His wife, Tisdale, joked, “what would he retire from? He drives around the South, plays golf, and takes people out to dinner.”
Joking aside, McDonald has philanthropic interests, a hunting camp in Arkansas, and plans to spend time with his four children and nine grandchildren.
“I don’t really contemplate retirement,” he said, “so I don’t have any big plans.”
Family Ties
Argent founder and CEO Kyle McDonald and his wife of 42 years, Tisdale, raised four children in Ruston, Louisiana.
The oldest, Brooks Campany, regional manager of Argent Trust in Oxford, is celebrating 15 years with the company. She’s married to Port, and is mother to Porter, 8, and Wills, 6.
“I consider it one of the greatest blessings of my life that I’ve been able to work for a company my dad has built,” said Campany.
Their younger daughter, Blair Hull, is president of Argent Foundation, working in the company’s Oxford office. An Ole Miss graduate with a master’s degree in business administration, she’s married to Drew, and has three children, Parker, 7, Ella, 5, and Kent, 1.
“My sister and I are still best friends, and we have a wonderful relationship with our father that’s been more rewarding than I could have ever imagined,” said Campany. “As the years tick on, I’m becoming more grateful because I know that something this great is unique and special.”
McDonald said he relishes collaborating with his daughters.
“I try not to be too much of a hindrance to what their capabilities are,” he said with a laugh.
Their son, Kade, third in line, joined Origin Bank in Shreveport, LA, in 2017, after spending nearly six years in the oil and gas industry as a landman. An LSU graduate, he’s a commercial lender and vice president for the bank; Argent is the bank’s outsourced wealth management group.
“Kade has a tether to us, but not as an Argent employee,” said Campany.
Their younger daughter, and the baby in the family, Mary-Kyle, has been a speech-language pathologist since 2017. An Ole Miss graduate who earned a master’s degree in communication disorders from LSU, she married Ruston State Bank president Johnny Maxwell’s grandson, Johnny Maxwell III, last year.
“She and her husband just bought a house in my parents’ neighborhood, and they’ll have what will be my parents’ ninth grandchild in September,” said Campany. “Their first child is a boy, and they’re naming him Johnny Maxwell IV. It kind of puts a bow on my dad’s story.”
