Financier Repurchases Shearson Unit : Frank O’Bryan Gets Back Part of Mortgage Firm He Sold in 1979
Frank O’Bryan, a Newport Beach financier who sold a mortgage company to the old Shearson Hayden Stone brokerage house for $16 million in 1979, has repurchased the escrow unit of the company from Shearson/American Express for an undisclosed sum.
O’Bryan, who retired last February as chairman of the escrow company’s parent, Shearson Lehman Mortgage Co., renamed his acquisition the Spring Mountain Escrow Corp.
He also left his position as vice chairman of Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc., the nation’s second-largest stock brokerage firm, when the sale of the escrow company was completed last Thursday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
With 20 offices in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the new Spring Mountain is the largest independent escrow company in Southern California.
“I’m not the retiring type,” said O’Bryan, 52. “This is a nice little company and a nice nucleus to get into other things, though I don’t know what right now.”
His immediate plans are to expand the escrow company’s business, which he expects will report $5 million in revenues for 1985.
O’Bryan said that when Shearson Lehman Mortgage Co. and its securities parent decided to get out of the escrow business this fall, he jumped at the chance to buy the Shearson/American Express Escrow Co. Negotiations took only two months, he said.
In 1954, after graduating from the University of Arizona, O’Bryan joined his grandfather’s San Bernardino business, then called Southern California Mortgage & Loan Corp. He became president in 1967 and, with his mother, took the company public in 1971. The two held half the shares. The company was renamed Western Pacific Financial Corp. in 1973 and moved to Newport Beach a few years later.
When he sold the company, which eventually became known after a series of mergers as Shearson/American Express Mortgage Co., O’Bryan remained as its chairman, serving more than 30 years with the company before retiring.
In buying the escrow company, O’Bryan brought three mortgage company executives with him. They are executive vice presidents Michael H. Jacobson and Christine M. Sanderson and corporate secretary Joyce Edwards.
