Warren A. Stephens (1957–)

Warren A. Stephens was chief executive officer of Stephens Inc., one of the world’s largest privately owned investment banks, which was founded by his uncle Witt Stephens and developed by his father, who were among the richest and most influential men in Arkansas history. Stephens was appointed as ambassador to the United Kingdom by President Donald Trump in 2025.

Warren Amerine Stephens was born on February 18, 1957, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Jackson Thomas (Jack) Stephens and Mary Goodman Amerine Stephens. His older brother, Jackson T. “Steve” Stephens Jr., joined the Stephens brokerage after college but ultimately developed a cool relationship with their father and left the firm. Warren Stephens attended school in Little Rock in the early grades but, after his parents’ divorce, moved with his mother to Montgomery, Alabama, her father’s birthplace, and attended Trinity Presbyterian High School, playing baseball for the varsity team and graduating in 1975. Much like his father, he was a lifelong sports enthusiast, especially baseball and golf. He graduated from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, in 1979 with a degree in economics, followed by a master’s degree in business administration from Wake Forest University at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he would meet his future wife.

After college, he joined the family investment firm, already locally famous owing to the expertise and political power of brothers Witt and Jack Stephens. In November 1981, he married Harriet Whitaker Calhoun in North Carolina. They had three children, all of whom eventually worked for Stephens Inc.

In December 1976, Forbes magazine, then headquartered in New York City, carried an article about the investment bank in remote Arkansas, which it described as the tenth largest in the United States and the largest off Wall Street. The article touched off other laudatory articles about the firm and the brothers, including a lengthy series in the Arkansas Gazette about how they accumulated their fortune and built the investment bank and their dominance in gas distribution in the region. Stephens and the brothers continued to make big business news—founding Allied Telephone Company (later called Alltel before it was sold to Verizon) and Systematics, a bank data-processing company, and handling initial stock offerings for ultimate corporate giants like Walmart.

Jack became the CEO, while Witt concentrated on developing the Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company (Arkla) and the brothers’ smaller gas system in western Arkansas, Arkansas Oklahoma Gas. After Jack went into semi-retirement and passed on leadership of Stephens Inc. to Warren in 1986, the company continued to grow. In the famous period of skyrocketing business growth under President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2009, Stephens Inc. followed a conservative strategy of keeping its debt ratio at 2:1; others went to 30:1, leading many to collapse in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

In 2006, the offspring of the two brothers—Witt had died in 1991 and Jack in 2005—divided the family estates. As CEO, Warren kept control of Stephens Inc. and its financial-services subsidiaries, while Witt’s children, Witt Stephens Jr. and Elizabeth Campbell, undertook private investments as the Stephens Group.

When Stephens’s father retired, he concentrated on philanthropy, which he had once remarked was one of the two joys of accumulating lots of money—first making it and then spending it. Jack Stephens spent millions of dollars on new facilities for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts), the Episcopal Collegiate School in Little Rock, and the United States Naval Academy (his alma mater) in Annapolis, Maryland.

Warren followed some of his father’s philanthropic impulses, though not on the same scale or for the same benevolent purposes. Jack, for instance, funded cancer and aging-care institutes at UAMS, while Warren largely developed the exclusive Alotian Club, a spectacular private golf course in the hills off state Highway 10 west of Little Rock, which was rated one of the top 100 golf courses in the country; moved the Arkansas Travelers professional baseball team into a new park on the Arkansas River in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) and named it Dickey-Stephens Park for his father Jack, his uncle Witt, and George and Bill Dickey, baseball stars for the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox; and was instrumental in funding the renovation of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, which reopened in 2023.

By 2025, Stephens Inc. was one of the largest privately owned investment banks in the country, had over twenty-five offices worldwide, and employed more than 1,200 people. A Forbes magazine newsletter in December 2024 reported that Warren Stephens’s net worth was $3.4 billion, also including a chart that showed a spectacular rise in Stephens’s net worth after 2020.

In addition, Stephens was among several billionaires who would serve in Trump’s second administration, being appointed as the ambassador to the United Kingdom. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, as the post is called, is perhaps the most prestigious appointment in the nation’s diplomatic corps. The ambassador facilitates formal relations between the United States and the British monarch and government of the United Kingdom. Stephens was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 29, 2025.

The position once was reserved for America’s most influential men—five early American presidents, starting with John Adams, held the job—but in modern times ambassadorships from both parties have tended to go to a president’s key political supporters and financial contributors. Trump simultaneously appointed former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a major supporter, to the position of ambassador to Israel. While Warren Stephens had been an on-and-off supporter of Trump after Trump entered presidential politics in 2015, the Arkansas financier had given millions of dollars to opponents of Trump in the 2024 race for the presidential nomination, including former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Stephens had given $1 million to former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a fierce critic of Trump, before Hutchinson abandoned the race for president in January 2024. Once Trump had locked up the Republican nomination, however, Stephens gave at least $6.5 million to the former president’s campaign or his super PAC (political action committee); in addition, prior to being nominated ambassador to the United Kingdom, he donated $4 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, making him the top individual donor to the fund. He also gave a total of $21.9 million in 2023 and 2024 to conservative groups supporting Republican causes and candidates.

For additional information:
Dumas, Ernest. “The Stephens Empire—I, Brothers Envy of Wall Street.” Arkansas Gazette, June 26, 1977, pp. 1A , 14A.

———. “The Stephens Empire—II, Government ‘Partner’ of Brothers.” Arkansas Gazette, June 28, 1977, pp. 1A, 15A.

———. “The Stephens Empire—III, A Legend in State Politics.” Arkansas Gazette, June 29, 1977, pp. 1A, 10A.

Hebda, Dwain. “Fortunate Son: Warren Stephens’ Success Carried Forth a Family Legacy.” Arkansas Money & Politics (AMP), March 14, 2024. https://armoneyandpolitics.com/warren-stephens-success-carries-forth-family-legacy/ (accessed April 16, 2025).

Kim, Minho. “Trump Appoints Billionaire Who Once Supported His Opponents.” New York Times, December 1, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/us/politics/britain-ambassador-trump-stephens.html (accessed April 16, 2025).

Smith, David. “Economics Group Honors Stephens.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 27, 2019, pp. 1D, 4D. Online at https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2019/mar/27/economics-group-honors-stephens-2019032/ (accessed April 16, 2025).

Stephens Inc. https://www.stephens.com/ (accessed April 16, 2025).

Thomas, Alex. “Stephens Nominated as Ambassador to UK.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 3, 2024, pp. 1A, 5A. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/dec/02/trump-names-warren-stephens-as-next-uk-ambassador/ (accessed April 16, 2025).

———. “Stephens Makes UK Envoy Pitch to Senate Panel.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 2, 2025, p. 6A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/apr/01/stephens-faces-us-senate-panel-in-pursuit-of-uk/ (accessed April 16, 2025).

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas