The Year in Business: Sector wrap-up
BY Staff Reports
Sunday, December 30, 2012
12/30/12 at 4:54 AM
Finance
BOK Financial Corp. completes acquisition of The Milestone Group, a Denver-based independent wealth-management firm with nearly $1.3 billion in assets under management. The acquisition marks the first for the Tulsa-based company since 2007 when it expanded into the greater Denver area and Texas.
First Oklahoma Bank in December breaks ground on a six-story, 60,000-square-foot headquarters at the Village on Main in Jenks to accommodate its long-term growth plans. The project includes a new adjacent five-story parking garage that will serve the Jenks community.
Yorktown Financial Holdings Inc. completes its acquisition of Pryor- based CNBO Bancorp Inc., the Century Bank of Oklahoma holding company, which has two sites in Pryor and two in the Tulsa area.
Tulsa-based F&M Bank & Trust Co. expands its presence in the Dallas market with the opening of two additional branches.
Energy
December: Samson Resource Co. announces layoffs for 120 people companywide, including 70 at Tulsa headquarters. The reduction comes one year to the month that New York equity firm KKR & Co. bought Samson in a $7.2 billion leveraged buyout.
August: Eagle Energy LLC, which grew quickly in less than three years due to aggressive asset purchases in the Mississippi Lime of northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, was acquired by Houston-based Midstates Petroleum Co. for $650 million in cash and stock. Midstates plans to keep the Tulsa office open as a center for state drilling activity.
January: Apache Corp. buys more than a quarter-million acres in the liquids rich Anadarko Shale of western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. The acquisition necessitates a bigger Tulsa regional operations office, so Apache announced plans to hire close to 100 more employees.
Aerospace
AMR Corp., bankrupt parent of American Airlines and American Eagle Airlines, sheds billions of dollars in debt by restructuring real estate and aircraft leases, three union collective bargaining agreements and cutting thousands of employees.
The Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust in March accepted the $18.06 million west concourse reconstruction project, the grand opening of which was celebrated several weeks later.
Although company operations in Tulsa and McAlester were unaffected, a series of spring storms in April damaged and closed for several days the Wichita plant of Spirit AeroSystems
Tulsa International Airport in September launched a new website, logo and branding campaign.
In late September, a California woman donated the Spartan Aircraft Co.'s post-World War II Spartan Model 12 prototype to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum
Transportation
In February, Arrow Trucking Co. bankruptcy trustee Patrick J. Malloy III filed the Trustee's Final Report on the 2-year-old bankruptcy liquidation case in which he determined assets at $8.55 million and liabilities at $98.97 million. Malloy paid out $4.18 million to former Arrow employees who filed wage and employment law violation claims against the estate and rang up $1.86 million in administrative expenses.
The first of nine planned state-of-the-art commercial truck weigh and inspection stations opened in Kay County in April. Transportation-related agencies celebrated completion of the $11 million facility with an open house on April 27.
