Regulators Close 4 More Thrifts, 2 in Region

Four more insolvent savings and loans, including two in the Los Angeles area, were seized by federal banking regulators Thursday, bringing to 220 the number of thrifts taken over in the past three months as part of President Bush’s savings and loan bailout plan.

Southwest Savings & Loan in Los Angeles and Westco Savings Bank in Wilmington have been placed into a conservatorship overseen by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., regulators announced. The other two seizures occurred at small thrifts in New Jersey and South Carolina.

As with previous takeovers, regulators said customers probably should not notice any changes in the daily operations of the financial institutions. All deposits are insured up to $100,000.

“It’s business as usual,” said one regulatory spokesman. He added that the seized thrifts will probably be sold or merged once Congress completes approval of pending legislation to foot the cost of hundreds of thrift failures. The rescue package is expected to cost $157 billion during the next 10 years.

Regulatory spokesmen offered no explanation for why Westco Savings and Southwest Savings failed. According to figures from the Austin, Tex., consulting firm of Sheshunoff & Co., each financial institution had been losing money and by the end of last year had nearly exhausted the amount of capital required by regulators.

Southwest Savings is a medium-sized thrift with 25 branch offices. It has $963 million in assets, $837 million in deposits and 69,100 customer accounts, regulators said.

Westco is much smaller, with three branches and $203 million in assets. It has $194 million in deposits and 13,800 customer accounts.