Chief Executive of Viejo Audit Corp. Purchases the Company for $25,000 : BANKING/FINANCE

William T. Weir, chief executive officer of Viejo Audit Corp., has bought out the Mission Viejo bank auditing company for $25,000, the amount original investors put into the year-old firm.

Weir, who has 25 years of bank auditing experience, specializes in preparing banks for routine examinations by state and federal regulators.

The company currently serves community banks in California, Oregon and Nevada but has plans to expand to Washington, Idaho and Arizona, said Dennis Haase of Visalia, a new director and corporate legal counsel.

The expansion plans had been stymied by the original owners, five directors of Viejo Bancorp, the holding company for Mission Viejo National Bank. Haase said the owners did not want the firm to get much larger.

Viejo Audit also ran into some problems trying to market its services to bankers, some of whom shied away from using an “independent” auditor connected to another bank, he said.

So Weir reached an agreement to buy the auditing firm from the original directors. Weir, 51, of Laguna Niguel, is sole owner and chairman, but he has brought in Haase and three others as directors.