Some Room at the Inn
Is it curtains for Fabulous Inns of America?
Perhaps.
Last week, the company’s management filed court papers that threatened to liquidate the small but profitable Mission Valley hotel company if its current legal battle with major shareholder Frank Ferreira isn’t resolved.
The timetable: sometime before the company’s scheduled Jan. 30 annual meeting--its first since mid-1984.
The liquidation idea is a strategy, not a tactic, according to Bill Lerach, the company’s attorney, who said that dissolving the company “may be a better route” than continuing the years-long litigation over corporate control.
The stock is trading at between 4 and 5, and liquidation is “significantly in excess of the market price,” according to Lerach.
In the Driver’s Seat
Authorities on Monday charged two San Diego businessmen with 67 counts of grand theft and grand theft auto for selling 150 subleased cars without the owners’ or original lenders’ consent.
Robert F. Maurer, who owned R&S; Towing, and Robert Dixon, a.k.a. Robert McGuire, who owned Lease One Financial Services, were responsible for more than $2 million in losses, according to a felony criminal complaint filed Monday by the San Diego district attorney’s office. Dixon pleaded not guilty at his arraignment; an arrest warrant, with bail set at $100,000, was issued for Maurer.
Just in Time
As far as Torrey Pines Bank officials are concerned, their $10.3-million private placement last week is the third largest by any financial institution in the state.
Regardless of the rank, however, the bank flat-out needed the capital. There was no regulatory pressure to increase capital, at least not yet.
“Pressure would have come,” acknowledged one bank official. “We forecast a year ago that we would need capital.”
Indeed, the bank’s growth has been rapid and large, with assets rising 81% in 1985 and 50%, to $253 million, through the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 1986.
For the year-end, bank officials say that assets will reach more than $300 million, which means the bank would have needed equity of $18 million to meet regulatory minimums. Thanks to the private placement, capital will total $21.5 million at year-end.
A final Torrey Pines note: 72% of the private placement came from existing shareholders, most of them directors. It was the third such private placement for the 8-year-old bank.
