FINANCE : New Director of First American Was Being Wooed by Rival Fidelity National

It seemed like a perfunctory announcement.

Veteran Orange County businessman Frank O’Bryan recently became a director of First American Financial Corp., a company that has a board heavily laden with big players in real estate and other businesses.

But the Santa Ana company, the nation’s second-largest title insurance company, picked up a director whose business was being wooed by rival Fidelity National Financial Corp., which operates the nation’s fifth-largest title carrier.

O’Bryan, whose heads Spring Mountain Escrow Corp. in Newport Beach, said it was just happenstance, something that evolved from his longtime friendship with First American’s chairman, Donald P. Kennedy.

“I was talking with Don about three weeks ago, and he says that I ought to be on his board,” O’Bryan said. Next thing he knew, O’Bryan said, he received a letter saying he was being nominated as a director and asking him to attend a board meeting the next day.

Fidelity’s chairman, William P. Foley II, had discussions earlier this year with O’Bryan about the possibility of forming a business alliance. Companies involved in real estate transactions, such as lenders, escrow companies and title insurers, sometimes feed business to each other.

But nothing came of the talks.

“I dropped the ball on that,” Foley said. “I never followed up with O’Bryan. First American got a good man.” Or as Frank P. Willey, Fidelity’s general counsel, said: “I wish we would have thought of it first.”

O’Bryan became the 15th member of a board that includes such real estate moguls as George L. Argyros, head of Arnel & Affiliates in Costa Mesa, and Anthony R. Moiso, head of the Santa Margarita Co. in San Juan Capistrano. Also on the board are Virginia Ueberroth, president of the Ueberroth Family Foundation, and James L. Doti, president of Chapman University in Orange.