Investors Plan to Add to Stake in Christiana

A group of Texas investors who last month took control of San Diego-based Christiana Cos. on Monday engineered a plan to buy out most of the remaining stock held by company founders.

At a special board meeting held Monday in New York, the board approved the company’s purchase of 114,700 shares, or about 4.8%, of Christiana’s outstanding common shares from Fenton family trusts at $12 per share.

At the same time, the investor group, led by savings and loan executive John H. Roberts of San Antonio, agreed to purchase an additional 114,700 shares from the Fenton trusts at the same price.

Included in the sale are 75,000 shares held by Martin Fenton Jr., the current president and former chairman and chief executive.

Roberts, who owned 28% of Christiana’s stock through his Plainview, Tex.-based Summit Savings & Loan Assn. before Monday’s meeting, was named chairman of the real estate concern in early February.

Christiana has developed the Tierrasanta section of San Diego, Huntington Harbour in Orange County and similar master-planned communities in Georgia.

Held About 14.6% in October

Also at Monday’s meeting, directors elected to the board San Antonio attorney James M. Holbrook, described by Christiana as “closely associated” with Roberts.

A spokesman for Christiana said that neither Fenton nor his brother Wendell, who is also a Christiana director, has left the company.

According to the proxy statement prepared for Christiana’s annual meeting last October, the Fentons then held about 351,450 shares, or 14.6%, of all outstanding common shares. Unless the brothers made additional purchases or sales, they would now hold about 122,050 shares, or 5% of the stock.