Failed Banks’ Equipment to Be Auctioned

For the third time this year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is holding an auction to rid itself of furnishings and equipment from failed Orange County banks.

An estimated $500,000 worth of furniture and equipment taken from defunct Capistrano National and South Coast banks will go on the auction block Dec. 7 under order of the FDIC, which seized the assets of the failed financial institutions.

Proceeds from the auction will go to the banks’ creditors, with the FDIC--which had insured deposits at Capistrano and South Coast--at the top of the list.

The liquidation involves nearly 2,000 items of office furnishings--executive and secretary desks, side chairs, credenzas, sofas and love seats, room dividers and lamps, plants and planters, paintings and prints and decorator items.

Such bank and office equipment as copiers, computers, files, typewriters, calculators and microfilm machines also will be sold, said David Lawson, president of Pasadena’s Lawson & Lawson Auctioneers. Lawson’s firm conducted both previous auctions.

Lawson said he expects that everything will be sold because there are no minimum bids.

The FDIC declared the Capistrano and South Coast banks insolvent within eight days of each other in April. Capistrano, based in Santa Ana, had been operating under FDIC orders for more than a year, and South Coast in Costa Mesa had struggled for about three years before it was closed.

The auction will begin at 9 a.m. at the former South Coast bank building, 890 Baker St., Costa Mesa.