Bank OZK Has Dominated Construction Lending. Its CEO Has No Plans To Slow Down No one has handed out more U.S. construction loans over the past year and a half than a midsized bank in Little Rock, Arkansas. In fact, no entity is even close. Bank OZK handed out more than $3B in real estate construction loans in 2023, while its closest competition, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, each originated less than $2B, according to MSCI. As most banks are pulling back from the real estate sector, Bank OZK is leaning in — it followed up last year's dominance with another $688M in construction debt in the first quarter. “We're getting a much larger share of the pie right now, but it's just a smaller pie,” Bank OZK CEO George Gleason told Bisnow in an interview this week. 
The 121-year-old financial institution sits in a unique position in commercial real estate lending, spending decades of economic and real estate cycles building its lending arm into a linchpin of development financing. Its construction lending business totaled $12B in outstanding loans at the end of the first quarter, 44% of… Read the full story here. | 
