Lindroth Leaves Sun Savings Board : Investor Says Job Done With Planned Cash Infusion

Sun Savings & Loan Assn. director Clifford Lindroth, who was ushered into office in February as a supporter of ousted Sun Chairman Daniel W. Dierdorff, resigned his directorship Monday “to pursue other business activities.”

With last week’s announcement that New York financier Van D. Greenfield planned to buy a 42% stake in the troubled S&L; and turn around its dwindling net worth with a $7-million cash infusion, “the board has done (its) job and I want to do something else,” Lindroth, an investor from Escondido, said in an interview.

In addition, because Sun’s liability insurance for directors and officers lapsed earlier this year, directors “have to be super careful,” he said.

Lindroth was a member of the so-called dissident group elected to Sun’s board earlier this year as part of a compromise to avoid what would have been a lengthy and heated proxy fight. The dissident group was given a five-seat majority on the board; at the same time, five directors who had voted to remove Dierdorff resigned.

“Dierdorff was part of (the dissident group), but Dierdorff never had any aspirations of coming back,” Lindroth said Monday.

Lindroth is the second director among the dissident group to resign in recent months. In June, Tad Fujita, an Orange County agriculture executive, stepped down from the board after it was revealed that he was convicted on two felony counts of conspiracy and attempted grand theft in 1973.