Top Management Shuffled : New Laguna Bank Chief Looks to Future

George S. Rawson, former manager of the main office of Eldorado Bank in Tustin, has taken over as president of Laguna Bank in Laguna Beach.

Rawson replaced Charles E. Keneley, who took a job in October managing the mortgage department of Mission Valley Bank in San Clemente.

With 20 years of banking experience, Rawson, 44, of Laguna Hills is the fifth executive from Eldorado Bank to be hired as a bank president elsewhere since 1982.

His mission at Laguna Bank, he said, is to “breathe new life” into the bank and to “make money.”

“The bank has really suffered recently from loan losses and heavy non-recurring expenses, especially in the legal area,” Rawson said.

Since taking over in December, he has changed the senior management team, brought in a new executive, promoted another executive and nearly completed a strategic business plan.

Cecil N. McCormick, former senior credit officer at American Interstate Bank in Newport Beach, has become Laguna Bank’s senior vice president and senior credit officer. Marsha Vick was promoted to the position of senior vice president and cashier. She had been a vice president in charge of operations.

The bank, which opened its first branch Monday, is trying to attract professionals--doctors, lawyers, accountants and small business executives--with a new program of products and services, Rawson said.

Last year, Laguna Bank had a series of problems--”very inordinate losses”--that Rawson said should not be occurring again.

“What really hurt the bank were some bad loans--primarily real estate developer loans and loans to contractors,” he said. A number of the loans ended up in court, costing the bank “probably $200,000” in attorney fees, he said.

While the bank has not completed its year-end audit, he said officers have “written off a bundle” in 1988 and expect a net loss of a little more than $1 million. He said he expects to recover half the loss from collections on the bad loans.

In addition, he said, the bank lost a $250,000 lawsuit to a customer who alleged that the bank failed to honor a loan agreement. And managers uncovered a check-kiting scheme but failed to act thoroughly enough to shut it down completely, he said. The scheme defrauded the bank of about $150,000, he said.

On the brighter side, regulators recently approved the sale of unissued stock to a group of Chicago area investors headed by First Oak Brook Bancshares, a multibank holding company, and three of First Oak’s principal directors and officers. First Oak will pump nearly $860,000 into Laguna Bank for a 29% stake in the bank.

The bank’s single largest shareholder, developer Richard Stenton, who arranged for First Oak’s investment more than a year ago, will see his stake in the bank fall to less than 18% from its current level of 24%.

Keneley, who had been Laguna Bank’s president for 3 years, said he left because he tired of the administrative work and the protracted approval process for the First Oak investment. The long wait for the new capital, he said, left the bank’s operations “at a standstill.”