BANKING

Another Keating Aide Testifies: Patricia Johnson, a former aide to Charles H. Keating Jr., testified at his criminal securities fraud trial that she was chosen to talk with nervous bondholders who called his company in the months before Lincoln Savings & Loan’s collapse, mainly because she knew little about the bonds. Johnson testified in Los Angeles Superior Court that Keating told her that it was “to our benefit” that she knew few details about the risky bonds sold by the Irvine S&L;’s parent company, American Continental Corp. On cross-examination, however, she said she couldn’t recall telling a special prosecutor in a tape-recorded conversation last year that “nobody actually asked me” to handle the increasing calls from small investors.