Dierdorff’s Defense
Daniel W. Dierdorff, the ousted chairman and chief executive of Sun Savings & Loan Assn. who is under grand jury investigation and has been sued by Sun for alleged fraud and mismanagement, has retained two local attorneys of note.
Peter Hughes, one of the city’s best-known criminal defense lawyers, will coordinate Dierdorff’s criminal case, and Thomas Sharkey, a civil litigator who defended Pacific Southwest Airlines after its 1978 crash in North Park, will handle the civil lawsuit chores.
Hughes has been working quietly on the case for the past three months; Sharkey was retained last week. Until now, Los Angeles attorney Arthur Fine has handled Dierdorff’s civil cases.
Hughes remains confident that his client will not be charged with any wrongdoing. “I’m not conceding there will be an indictment,” he said. “There’s nothing to indicate to me that that is a certainty. There is an investigation going on. Period.”
Hughes said that his “first and primary objective is to avoid an indictment being returned.”
Scratching for Cash
Missing financier Clifford Graham’s 180-foot yacht, the Pegasus, was auctioned off last week and fetched $925,000, reportedly from an overseas buyer. But investors in Graham’s bogus Au Magnetics firm, which reportedly attracted nearly $13 million from more than 100 clients, ought not to hold out much hope that they’ll get any of the boat’s proceeds.
Those funds will go to General Electric Credit, a secured creditor that’s owed $1.3 million for loaning Graham the money to buy the boat in 1976.
Meanwhile, the investors who filed a petition to force Graham into involuntary bankruptcy will likely get their way next week: If Graham, who has not been heard from since May, doesn’t respond to the petition, then the investors will receive an order declaring him bankrupt.
At that point, a trustee will be appointed to secure and liquidate the estate’s assets.
Maybe Chevron Will Say Yes
Officials at La Jolla-based GA Technologies should hear this week whether its parent, San Francisco-based Chevron Corp., will accept their offer to buy the company in a leveraged buyout.
GA Technologies executives put their offer--terms of which were undisclosed--on the table Oct. 17 and had expected a decision last Thursday.
“They told us our offer was competitive and reasonable and that they would consider it with one or two other offers,” according to GA Technologies spokeswoman Nicki Hobson.
Chevron bought GA late last year as part of its acquisition of Gulf Oil, GA’s former parent. The company has been trying to sell GA Technologies since then.
On Cue
Efforts by dissident Signal Cos. shareholders to block what they claim are more than $104 million in excessive compensation payments to Signal executives as part of the company’s merger with Allied Corp. likely will move ahead uninterrupted.
A hearing for a preliminary injunction is set for Thursday at 9 a.m. before San Diego Superior Court Judge Jack Levitt.
Last week, it appeared that the hearing would be delayed because another group of shareholders had similar litigation pending in Delaware. But a judge there stayed those actions in favor of the proceedings in San Diego.
Play It Again
Nick Sylvester’s first assignment as vice president of public relations at the Chase/Simpson advertising agency should be familiar. The work is for the Radisson Hotel in Mission Valley, where, until last month, Sylvester worked as PR and advertising director.
The hotel retained the agency last week.
The Hard Way
Paul Barkley believes it’s not proper to bite the hand that feeds. On a recent Sunday afternoon, the Barkley family found itself in Las Vegas without a return flight to San Diego. Barkley, PSA Inc.’s chairman and chief executive, said he, his wife and two children waited, and then waited some more, for seats to open up on PSA flights to San Diego.
Finally--rather than flying a competitor--his wife and daughter took a PSA flight to Orange County and drove a rental car to San Diego. Barkley and his son ended up flying to San Francisco and then to Orange County, where they, too, rented a car for the drive south.
“I can’t bump paying passengers,” said Barkley, with a smile.
