Investors Form Committee to Help Reorganize PMC : Bankruptcy: An examiner has been appointed to find out how the mortgage company, which has brought in a new chief executive, got into trouble.

The reorganization of Property Mortgage Co. under federal bankruptcy laws is under way, with the company’s investors having formed a creditors’ committee and the bankruptcy court appointing an examiner to find out how the company got into trouble.

Also, Jeffrey Katzer has been named the new chief executive of PMC, an Encino-based company that arranged mortgage loans for residential and commercial property with cash that primarily came from investors. Katzer is the founder and owner of Lincoln Mortgage Co. in Los Angeles, which arranges construction financing and other commercial loans for financial institutions, said Hydee R. Feldstein, a lawyer for PMC. His company is unrelated to Lincoln Savings & Loan.

“The company and the creditors’ committee agreed it would be in the company’s best interest to bring on somebody with his background,” Feldstein said. PMC’s co-owners are Elliot Fine and Stanley Glickman.

PMC and an affiliate company, SLGH Investments Inc., halted payments to investors Feb. 1 and stopped making new loans because of a cash squeeze. That prompted PMC’s biggest investors to file a petition Feb. 14 that forced PMC and SLGH into reorganization under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy laws. The companies have about $150 million in loans outstanding.

(Under Chapter 11, a company continues to operate but is shielded from creditors’ attempts to seize its assets until it works out a plan to pay its bills.)

The court-appointed examiner is Ted Roth, a Los Angeles accountant. His job, among other things, will be to investigate the facts surrounding PMC’s problems and to report on its financial condition, said Robert Nelson, a lawyer representing the creditors’ committee.

Nelson said that before the committee and PMC’s management can begin work on a reorganization plan, the committee first wants to make sure that PMC is collecting enough money from its existing loans to stay afloat, and that those funds are being held in a separate account.

It’s also still unclear whether the people who put money into PMC are technically lenders whose loans are secured by the properties they invested in, or whether they are unsecured investors, Nelson said. The distinction could affect what claims they have on the properties and other assets held by PMC.

Nelson also acknowledged that many of PMC’s investors have said their life savings--in some cases totaling $100,000 or more--are tied up in PMC, and that the creditors’ committee “recognizes the need to make prompt decisions.”

“This is a matter that will move, we hope, much more quickly than many Chapter 11s,” he said. “But if it bogs down in litigation, it will be viewed by me personally as a failure.”