UnionFed Posts $32.2-Million Loss for Year : Thrift: Brea-based parent of Union Federal Bank has lost a total of $137.1 million in four years. It announces shareholder approval of a recapitalization plan designed to stave off federal seizure.

UnionFed Financial Corp. on Tuesday reported a loss of $32.2 million for its latest fiscal year and said shareholders have approved a recapitalization plan designed to keep the troubled company from being seized by federal regulators.

The loss announced by the Brea-based parent company of Union Federal Bank, a thrift with 18 branches in Los Angeles and Orange counties, brings the company’s losses for the past four years to a total of $137.1 million.

“Anything other than a loss would’ve been a big surprise,” said Sally McIver, a senior thrift analyst at SNL Securities, a Virginia research firm that tracks 350 savings and loans. “Even though it was a substantial loss, it was expected.”

The company lost $18.1 million for fiscal 1990, $64.7 million for 1991 and $22.1 million for 1992, partly from losses on commercial real estate loans, apartment loans and other projects and ventures in the Northeast, Florida and California.

The company’s stock was unchanged at 34 cents a share in Tuesday’s trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shareholders on Tuesday signed off on the company’s capital restoration plan, which calls for a public stock offering of as much as $45 million and a 1-for-10 reverse stock split.

On July 16, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision approved that recapitalization plan and lifted a cease-and-desist order that had required Union Federal Bank to review its lending practices. Regulators had told UnionFed in June that they considered the thrift to be critically undercapitalized because its capital--the final reserve against losses--fell below 2% of its loans and other assets.

The company must raise at least $37.5 million through the stock offering by Sept. 23, or the thrift could be seized by regulators.

“If they are able to sell the stock, they have a good opportunity to be a viable company,” analyst McIver said.

The company said Tuesday that it lost $11.4 million, or $1.53 a share, for its fourth fiscal quarter. That compared to a loss of $4.8 million, or 64 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier.

The latest quarterly loss was because of additions to loan loss provisions and losses from real estate operations, which together totaled $13 million, up from $6.5 million for the same period a year quarter, the company said in a statement.

No one from the company was available for comment.

UnionFed is trying to reduce its non-performing assets by selling problem real estate and restructuring problem loans. As of June 30, its non-performing loans totaled $74 million, down from $139 million a year earlier, the company said.

The thrift’s assets fell 25% to $1.2 billion at the end of June from $1.6 billion a year earlier.