FSLIC Names New Team to Manage Troubled S
The federal regulatory agency overseeing American Diversified Savings Bank in Costa Mesa has named a new management team for the troubled operation.
Acting on a management reorganization plan submitted in July, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. has installed Thomas J. Haupert, an industry consultant, as president and chief executive of American Diversified, which was seized by federal and state regulators in February.
The new management plan was drafted by Pacific Savings Bank, the Costa Mesa savings institution that FSLIC hired as manager when American Diversified was declared insolvent. FSLIC, acting as conservator of American Diversified, terminated the Pacific Savings management contract on Aug. 15.
“We were there for six months . . . and there was no reason for us to stay there any longer,” said Dottie Potter, vice president and corporate secretary of $1.5-billion Pacific Savings.
“Basically, we went in to keep the place running and to get it going without the people from Pacific Savings,” Potter said. “Besides, FSLIC didn’t need a savings and loan in there.”
American Diversified had long irritated federal regulators with its wide-ranging investments in commercial real estate, apartments, hotels and alternative energy sources. It was essentially a development company, not an S&L.; It had $977 million in assets when it was seized but only a single savings office, located in Lodi.
The S&L;’s structure was layered with subsidiaries and partnerships involved in dozens of real estate syndications. “This is the most complicated company I’ve ever seen,” Haupert said. “They’re in every business in the world.”
Haupert said he and his new management team are trying to generate cash flow through the sale of assets in syndications and in development projects wholly owned by American Diversified.
Building Nearly Complete
Though most of the nationwide projects are apartment buildings, American Diversified owns 65% of a 10-story office building in downtown Santa Ana across from the old Orange County Courthouse. Construction is nearly complete and the savings bank is starting to lease space there, he said.
“We plan to sell it, though,” Haupert said. “In the long run, we don’t plan to keep anything.”
He said he expects to have an audited financial statement in November for the 1986 fiscal year ended June 30.
Haupert, who once worked at Pacific Savings, was brought in as chief financial officer of American Diversified when regulators took over the institution on Feb. 14 and hired the Pacific Savings management team.
Haupert said he has taken a leave of absence from his consulting work with the Newport Group in Irvine to accept the new post.
Besides promoting Haupert, FSLIC also named Thomas McCormick as executive vice president and chief operating officer and David Spahlinger as chief financial officer. Spahlinger originally was hired last spring, after FSLIC had taken over. McCormick was hired in November by American Diversified’s original owners, Ranbir S. Sahni, the former chairman, and Lester G. Day, the former president.
