Centennial Beneficial Corp. Changes Name, Partly Over Publicity Fallout

Orange County’s largest banking firm, Centennial Beneficial Corp. in Orange, has changed its name to West Coast Bancorp, partly because of unfavorable publicity involving its two major shareholder-founders.

Centennial Beneficial is a profitable, publicly held holding company for financial institutions, including Sunwest Bank in Tustin, which it acquired in 1985.

John B. Joseph and Ronald R. White, who own a total of about 20% of the banking firm, also started the publicly held Centennial Group two years ago to handle the six real estate limited partnerships they had formed. They own about 26% of the real estate firm.

Centennial Group has had cash-flow problems, and White and Joseph have been sued by investors. The company has come under critical news coverage in several publications, including Forbes magazine.

Centennial Group’s problems have damaged Centennial Beneficial’s success, said Frank E. Smith, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the banking firm.

“I spend half my time explaining to people that Centennial Beneficial is not part of Centennial Group,” he said. “If you track the time when Centennial Group was starting to make public disclosures about its condition and you track the two companies’ stock prices, you’d see the prices went in tandem--and it sure wasn’t up.”

At the close of trading Tuesday, the real estate firm’s stock was $1.75 a share, down 12.5 cents a share from Monday’s close, while the banking firm’s stock was $1.9375 a share, up 6.25 cents a share from Monday’s close.

Smith, Joseph and White insist, however, that the main reason for changing Centennial Beneficial’s name is to identify the firm more closely with what it is and does.

West Coast Bancorp, with $452 million in assets, owns Sunwest Bank, Sacramento First National Bank, Heritage Thrift & Loan Assn. of Brea and West Coast Realty Finance in Orange, formerly Centennial Beneficial Mortgage Co.