Trigg Pays Debt; Creditor Won’t Seize Family S
A lawyer for Pelikan Inc. said the West German office equipment firm will not seek control of Family Savings & Loan, the nation’s fourth-largest black-owned thrift, headquartered in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district.
Pelikan had said previously that it would try to seize the stock that belonged to Family Savings & Loan’s chairman and biggest shareholder, Oliver A. Trigg Jr., unless the banker paid a 2-year-old $180,000 debt by Monday.
William S. Harris, a lawyer for Pelikan, said Trigg paid his client $175,000 to settle the debt, which stemmed from the failure of Trigg’s office supplies business in 1985. Harris said Trigg told him that the negotiated settlement was paid with part of a $336,000 loan Trigg obtained from Family Savings.
Donald Grant, a member of the thrift’s board, confirmed that Trigg had been loaned the money as part of a refinancing of Trigg’s home. Trigg received “no special considerations,” Grant said.
Trigg, a 36-year-old investor who claims to have made a small fortune in real estate and the stock market, paid $1.24 million for a 51% interest in Family Savings in July. He has been the thrift’s chairman since May, 1986.
Thrift industry analysts have credited Trigg with improving Family Savings’ profits, which declined after the death in 1981 of the company’s founder, M. Earl Grant. However, some recent multimillion transactions involving Family Savings have drawn the attention of government regulators.
William B. Crawford, a state Department of Savings and Loan commissioner, said Monday that investigators are examining the thrift’s records “to see if any laws or regulations were violated” when Family Savings engaged in transactions that were detailed in an Oct. 6 story in The Times.
A spokeswoman for Trigg said he would not comment.
As previously reported, Inglewood apartment builder Willie A. Powell, a friend of Trigg’s, recently received two loans from Family Savings, one for $2.5 million and the other for $2.65 million.
Grant said the loans to Powell violated internal regulations that require board approval for loans of $2 million or more. Grant, the son of the thrift’s founder, declined to say whether any of the thrift’s officers were disciplined for the infraction.
