Bell National Expects to Post $47-Million Loss in ’84

Bell National Corp., a fast-growing California savings and loan holding company that has been plagued by management turmoil in recent months, said Thursday that it expects to lose at least $47 million in 1984 because of write-offs on its construction loans.

Bell National said the expected loss will severely slash, and possibly eliminate, the net worth of its principal subsidiary, Bell Savings & Loan Assn. Net worth is a measure of an institution’s assets minus its liabilities.

Bell Savings, based in San Mateo, has assets of nearly $2 billion, making it among the two dozen largest S&Ls; in the state. It has nineteen branch offices statewide, including 16 in the Bay Area and one each in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.

Bell National said its recent losses include $60 million in the fourth quarter as well as another $1 million in the first quarter of 1985. That will leave the association with a net worth of about $1 million--an amount that could be wiped out by further adjustments, the company said.

Bell Savings is the second medium-size California S&L; in recent days to disclose serious financial problems. Earlier this week, Beverly Hills Savings & Loan Assn. was seized by federal banking regulators after it announced last week that its net worth would be wiped out by a $100-million loss in 1984.

A spokesman for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the nation’s primary regulatory agency for S&Ls;, declined to comment on Bell National’s problems. However, he said, any attempt to compare the situations of the two associations was “presumptuous and inappropriate.”

Officials of Bell National said they expect the financial institution to survive without regulatory intervention. “We’ve identified our problems, and the indicators we’re getting from the regulators are that they are pleased,” Miles A. Cobb, the S&L;’s new chairman, said in a phone interview.

Cobb said the losses stem from troubled construction loans that have forced the firm to increase its reserves for loan losses to $76 million at year-end from $6.4 million at the end of the third quarter of 1984.

Cobb took over as chairman and chief executive of Bell National last month following nearly a year of management turmoil involving former Chairman David L. Butler. Cobb’s appointment came after the board of directors ousted Butler because of questionable transactions involving the former chairman and another director, James L. Grauer.