Plan for Sale of Bank of Orange County Jeopardized

Flush with cash from another bank-stock transaction, the owner of a Santa Ana truck-wrecking firm has purchased 8.1% of Bank of Orange County, possibly scuttling a pending deal for the institution’s sale.

Philip J. Rocco, owner of Rocco’s Truck, Van and Four-Wheel Drive Wrecking Co., has paid $315,925 over the last two months for his stake in the Bank of Orange County, according to a document filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Rocco’s purchase may kill the long-intended acquisition of the bank by Landmark Bank in La Habra, which reached a tentative agreement in February to buy the Fountain Valley-based bank.

Landmark had been waiting for the bank to clear up some of its legal woes--primarily litigation with regulators and others over a failed Northern California bank--before completing the deal.

“We’ve been watching it and we don’t like it,” Landmark President Craig Collette said about Rocco’s stock purchases. “We are concerned. We may not have a deal anymore.”

But Rocco said he simply was asked to join the board of directors two months ago and bought stock at $2.50 a share from several shareholders, including departing director Vern Curtis, dean of the Chapman College School of Business and Management.

“I only bought it because, as a new director, it was expected of me to buy stock,” Rocco said. “I don’t plan to buy any more stock.”

Bank of Orange County executives were not available for comment Monday.

Rocco is a former director of California City Bank in Orange, which was sold earlier this year to CommerceBank in Newport Beach. Rocco received more than $1.4 million for his stake in that bank.

Collette said Landmark executives will meet Wednesday to discuss whether to proceed with the acquisition.

Some industry leaders doubt that the Landmark deal will go through after all the delay. They note that directors of the Bank of Orange County last month replaced President Roger Pratt, a longtime friend of Collette’s who helped pull the bank out of financial problems during the last two years. The new president is David Hoffman.

Litigation over the failed Bank of Northern California in San Jose already has blocked at least two proposed deals for Bank of Orange County, whose parent company once owned 51% of the San Jose institution.

Regulators, acting as receiver for the failed institution, and investors in Bank of Northern California blame the Fountain Valley bank, among others, for the 1986 collapse of Bank of Northern California. Litigation in the matter is still pending.