Ex-Ticor Official to Head Westlake S & L
The former president of Ticor’s mortgage insurance unit, which faces potential losses of $166 million from the collapse of a Virginia real estate investment firm, is the new president and chief executive of a one-branch savings and loan in Westlake Village.
Gary Bradford, 48, replaces James Tannehill at the helm of 2-year-old City Savings & Loan. Bradford was president and chief operating officer of what is now TMIC Insurance, a subsidiary of Ticor, the Los Angeles-based financial services company.
TMIC was the nation’s No. 3 mortgage insurer, but ran into trouble in August when Equity Programs Investments of Falls Church, Va., defaulted on payments of $1.4 billion in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. TMIC was left with a potential loss of $166 million from insurance claims. In October, California insurance regulators barred it from writing any new business.
Bradford had headed the Ticor unit for four years when he left at the end of last month, according to a Ticor spokesman. Before joining Ticor, he was president and chief operating officer of PMI Mortgage Insurance, a San Francisco-based subsidiary of Sears.
Richard L. Darling, City Savings’ chairman, said City Savings’ board was delighted to get Bradford, a resident of Glendale. He added that Bradford’s former employers said Bradford had nothing to do with the TMIC fiasco.
“The guy really has an unblemished record,” Darling said.
Darling said Tannehill resigned “to seek other opportunities,” and that his departure reflected a change of strategy in which City Savings has decided to emphasize originating and selling mortgages.
“It’s going to be largely a mortgage-banking operation,” Darling said. “Our previous management did not have the kind of expertise Gary has in those operations,” he said of Bradford.
Neither Bradford nor Tannehill could be reached for comment.
City Savings, the only S & L headquartered in the Conejo Valley, had assets of $25.7 million as of June 30, 1985, the latest figures available from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.
