The president of a Chicago-based manufacturing company said it’s only a matter of time before the global credit crunch trickles down to midsize companies such as his.

"It will ... spill over into the real economy," Bill Little, president of sound system manufacturer Quam-Nichols Co., said yesterday during a panel discussion about the financial crisis.

Little said smaller businesses will have a tougher time getting credit, and that, he said, will have consequences.

"I believe it will be the fear, the lack of confidence and concern" that eventually will lead businesses to cut back on spending, lay off employees or delay expansion.

Little was one of seven panelists who participated in yesterday’s discussion, which was hosted by the University of Missouri Trulaske College of Business. The other panelists were: Andrew Beverley, chairman and CEO of First National Bank & Trust Co; W.D. Allen, visiting assistant professor of finance at MU; John Howe, Missouri Bankers Chair and MU finance professor; Karen Schnatterly, assistant professor of management at MU; and Judy Starr, chief financial officer of Boone County National Bank.

Bruce Walker, Lansford Professor of Leadership and Dean of the Trulaske College of Business, moderated the discussion, which attracted about 500 people, mostly MU students, to Cornell Hall on the MU campus.

Beverley said Columbia has several factors that will help it weather current troubles. The First National Bank chief said Columbia has a strong employment base that is bolstered by the university and the health-care and insurance industries. Although home sales are down - Beverley said only about 1,800 homes will be sold this year compared with about 2,900 a year just a few years ago - the local housing market is stabilizing.

"There’s no question that we’re in for tough economic times," he said, "but I have confidence that our local economy will be resilient."

Starr, of Boone County National Bank, said the collapse of large Wall Street financial institutions does not translate into trouble for local banks.

"These national lenders were driven by volume," she said. "We’re interested in relationships."

Starr and Beverley said business has been good this year because their banks have continued their conservative banking practices.

"Our deposits are local and our loans are local, and we’re very much looking for new opportunities to make new loans," Beverley said.

But, panelists noted, no one really knows the extent to which the global financial crisis will affect mainstream America.

"Nobody knows," Schnatterly said. "We have thoughts and opinions, but honestly, nobody knows."

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