Would-Be Buyers Aren’t Scrambling for Imperial
Potential buyers have yet to surface for any of the businesses operated by Imperial Savings Assn., the troubled San Diego-based thrift that was taken over Feb. 23 by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, banking regulators said Thursday.
OTS “is still planning to sell (Imperial) on a whole-bank basis,” said Larry Schannault, an agent with the federal Resolution Trust Corp., the federal agency that disposes of failed thrifts and banks. Schannault is leading a seven-member team that has taken over management of Imperial.
However, some S&L; industry analysts believe that a piecemeal sale of the thrift is more likely because potential buyers of Imperial’s 80-branch retail banking business throughout California are not likely to bid on Imperial’s troubled junk-bond and consumer-loan portfolios.
About 75 Imperial employees have been laid off since regulators seized the thrift, according to Neil Pont, an Imperial vice president. Nearly all of those layoffs occurred in Imperial’s now-defunct real estate loan origination division, Pont said.
No further layoffs are planned at Imperial, which now has about 1,800 employees, Pont said.
Schannault, during a Thursday press conference, declined to speculate on when a sale of Imperial’s assets might occur. Analysts have said that the value of Imperial’s branch system could be adversely affected if the business remains unsold for a long period of time.
The federal government is now trying to dispose of more than 300 failed institutions and some members of Congress have questioned whether the RTC is properly staffed to properly dispose of all those institutions.
Schannault declined to comment on Imperial’s losses in recent months, or speculate on what it will cost taxpayers to solve the failed thrift’s financial problems. Imperial reported assets of $9.7 billion, total liabilities of $9.65 billion and negative tangible capital of $60.1 million on Dec. 31, 1989. Deposits at year-end stood at $6.6 billion.
Deposits held by Imperial’s 350,000 customers at branches in California evidently have remained at about $6 billion. Schannault, who declined to state the thrift’s current deposit total, said that the thrift lost less than 1% of total deposits in the days after federal regulators took control of the thrift.
Schannault, who is also the RTC officer in charge of Gibraltar Savings & Loan, a Simi Valley thrift that was seized a year ago, declined to speculate on when a buyer might surface for the thrift.
