4 Take Control of Ailing S&L; in Westminster : Businessmen, Delta Board Put in $2 Million
Four Korean businessmen took control of foundering Delta Savings Bank and, together with current directors, infused $2 million in cash into the Westminster institution to revive it.
Delta, which saw its capital base eroding in the last year, now has more than enough capital to support its $60 million in assets and to meet tougher regulatory requirements, according to Chong Ho Rim, a certified public accountant who took over this week as Delta’s chief financial officer.
Rim replaced Robert Laddaga, who resigned to take a job at Brookside Savings & Loan in Los Angeles. Laddaga left last Friday when regulators approved the change in control.
Another investor, Young Il Kim, a banker and accountant, took over this week as president, replacing Joseph Gaskill, who, as one of the largest shareholders, became a consultant to Delta.
Expected to Be Chairman
Another investor, Yun Suk Seo, an owner of a string of restaurants, is expected to be elected chairman, a post that has long been vacant. The fourth investor is Michael Kim, who owns a garment-manufacturing operation in Los Angeles.
Delta has long catered to the county’s Vietnamese community known as Little Saigon, but Rim said the S&L; has been trying to reach out to the rest of the city through a branch on Brookhurst Street.
Delta’s financial problems stem from loans that went sour as long as six years ago. But it was a constant change in management and an unwieldy board of directors, which had 15 members, that was at the root of Delta’s woes, Rim said.
“Every board member had divergent points of view on how to solve Delta’s problems,” he said. “And within seven years, it had six or seven presidents, which is hard because any organization needs a sense of continuity.”
In the 18 months before it opened in 1982, Delta’s organizers saw the community along Bolsa Avenue grow dramatically to become a center for Vietnamese immigrants. They quickly changed the proposed name of the S&L; from Beach Cities to Delta--for Indochina’s Mekong Delta--and added Vietnamese businessmen to the board, expanding it to 15 members. The board was trimmed earlier this year to 11 members.
Board Limited to 7
The new board is limited to seven members--the four new investors and three Vietnamese nationals from the old board. The three holdovers are Drs. Minh Ngoc Dang and Ba Xuzn Nguyen and businessman Ban Bing Bui.
Rim credited Gaskill with helping to hold the institution together as regulators severely restricted its lending operations and directors looked for new investors.
Delta lost $333,000 in the first six months of this year, and at the end of July it had only $667,000 in capital, its final reserve against losses. That represented about a third of the capital level that regulators require.
