BANKING : US Facilities Hopes Buy-Back Will Boost Faltering Stock Price

Investors seem to have lost interest in the hostile takeover bid for US Facilities Corp. in Costa Mesa.

The holding company for insurance underwriting services can’t seem to get its stock price back to the $13-a-share level at which it was trading last spring when Fidelity National Financial Inc. in Irvine offered $15 a share.

So US Facilities recently decided to buy back as much as $5 million worth of its stock in an effort to boost the price, which has recently been $10 a share or lower. The stock closed Tuesday at $9.875 a share, unchanged, in Nasdaq trading.

The low price typically would indicate that investors don’t think the takeover is goinggo through.

At US Facilities’ annual meeting in May, Fidelity won a shareholder vote to put the company up for sale to the highest bidder and appeared to win two seats on US Facilities’ board.

But US Facilities, which is incorporated in Delaware, challenged the election in Delaware Chancery Court and won an order reversing the vote. Fidelity appealed the decision and is awaiting a ruling from the Delaware Supreme Court.

The stock buy-back offer could also stifle additional Fidelity efforts to acquire US Facilities. The offer could attract shareholders who supported Fidelity, which could erode support for the nation’s fifth-largest title insurance company. But the low trading price is no endorsement of the current management of US Facilities, either.