Home Savings Agrees to Buy 4 Ohio S

Home Savings of America, the nation’s second-largest savings and loan association, has agreed to acquire four of the 70 S&Ls; in Ohio that were closed in March during a deposit run that hit some of the state’s privately insured savings institutions, it was announced Monday.

Robert B. McAlister, savings and loan superintendent in Ohio, said in Columbus that Los Angeles-based Home Savings has signed letters of intent to buy S&Ls; in the Ohio cities of Upper Sandusky, Hamilton, Oxford and Dresden.

The four financial institutions, whose combined assets total $291 million, have been open on a limited-service basis following the bank holiday that was declared March 15 by Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste.

A Home Savings spokeswoman confirmed that the letters of intent have been signed but added that federal banking regulators haven’t yet approved the sale. “Without that,” she said, “we have nothing.”

A spokesman for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the primary regulatory agency for federally insured S&Ls;, couldn’t be reached for comment. It has been the bank board’s policy to allow interstate mergers in cases where healthy financial institutions wanted to acquire failing ones.

If the sale goes through, it would expand Home Savings’ present banking network of 269 offices in six states. It also would reduce to 10 the number of privately insured S&Ls; in Ohio that have been unable to reopen on a full-service basis since Celeste’s closure order.