Beach Savings Gets a New Owner and Doubles Its Size

Beach Savings Bank got a new owner Tuesday and two new branches that more than doubled its size as Anaheim developer James A. Carter completed his $2-million acquisition of the Huntington Beach savings institution.

The acquisition of two branches of Fullerton Savings & Loan Assn.--one in Newport Beach and one in Fountain Valley--give the 18-month-old Beach Savings a total of three offices and about $49 million in assets. That is more than twice the $21 million it had before the acquisition, according to Beach Savings President Ernest Thompson.

“We’ll run a traditional savings and loan operation with residential loans and some consumer loans,” Thompson said, “and we’ll offer a variety of savings plans for depositors.”

He said the S&L; has no plans to make any direct investments in real estate projects, a practice allowed by state law but frowned upon by regulators.

As part of the acquisition, Carter also has put an additional $2 million into the S&L;’s capital base, raising it to about $3.8 million.

Thompson would not release income figures for the first nine months ended Sept. 30, but he said retained earnings for the first five quarters of the S&L;’s existence were a negative $450,000.

He said that Carter, who has been trying to buy an S&L; for more than two years, thinks the industry is a good investment now. He added that Carter, who heads Spruce Grove Inc. construction company, also has some expertise in real estate lending, an S&L;’s staple product.

Carter had tried for nearly two years to buy Progressive Savings & Loan Assn. in Alhambra, but he lost out to a last-minute bid by a New York investor last summer.

Executives at Beach approached Carter after reading news stories about his problems at Progressive. A group of insiders led by Alfred I. Puchner, president and chief executive of Beach Savings, had made a bid to gain majority control. Instead, the group decided to sell out to Carter. While all the other Beach Savings directors resigned, Puchner remains on the board as vice chairman during a transition period that is expected to end within three months.

Acquisition of the Fullerton Savings branches had been started by prior Beach Savings management. Fullerton Savings, which had designated the branches for sale as part of a 1984 restructuring, is concentrating its efforts in northern Orange County.