Corporate Rescuer Assembling Team to Tackle Fiscal Crisis : Recovery: L.A. businessman Sanford Sigoloff appears likely to succeed Ernie Schneider as top O.C. executive. A decision is expected within two weeks.

A Los Angeles businessman described as the likely front-runner to become Orange County’s interim chief executive said Sunday that he is working to assemble a crack team of finance specialists and business consultants to help him lead the county out of its bankruptcy crisis.

Corporate rescuer Sanford Sigoloff has already received the backing of Supervisor Marian Bergeson to succeed former Chief Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider, who was demoted last week amid growing dissatisfaction with his fiscal recovery plans.

Supervisor William G. Steiner said Sunday that he is also leaning toward Sigoloff, and Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said Saturday after meeting with Sigoloff that he is impressed with him.

The supervisors will consider his application along with those of four others on Tuesday, and are expected to make a decision within the next two weeks.

Bergeson said Sunday that she will urge the board to move quickly to make the appointment.

“I’m very, very high on his ability to get the job done,” she said. “He very likely is the front-runner.”

Sigoloff, 64, said Sunday that a significant factor in whether he decides to accept the job is his ability to pull together a hand-picked team to restructure county government within the six-month time frame set by county supervisors.

Sigoloff began over the weekend to contact five candidates for his team, several members of which he plans to draw from his own Los Angeles management-consulting firm, he said.

“It’s an exciting job and I am extremely interested in it, but I want to be sure I’ll be successful in it before I say yes--and that will depend on the people I work with,” Sigoloff said. “I have to give an answer that is honorable. I have to be confident that I have the time and people to do what I think is the best possible job.”

Besides acting as chief executive officer of his firm, Sigoloff was confirmed last week to serve on the state’s Board of Education.

The top job, as newly defined by county supervisors, would have broad new powers to hire and fire employees and cut budgets.

If Sigoloff took the position, he said, he would strongly support Bergeson’s coming proposal for an immediate outside independent audit of all county operations.

Bergeson said Sunday that she will unveil the details of her proposal today or Tuesday and ask for a vote on it by supervisors Feb. 7. Bergeson said she believes she already has the support of the board.

Said Sigoloff: “We need to know where the bottom is--what are the expenses, the obligations, the commitments that can’t be broken. . . . That’s the first thing you do is get control of the checkbook.”

A graduate of Beverly Hills High School, UCLA and Pepperdine University, Sigoloff now lives in Bel Air.

He is a former nuclear chemist best known for his “We got the message, Mr. Sigoloff” television commercials for Builder’s Emporium and his turnaround of Wickes Companies in the 1980s.

He has also been nicknamed “Ming the Merciless” after a comic strip villain for imposing drastic personnel cuts to eliminate red ink.

The other candidates for the job include talk show host and attorney Hugh Hewitt; Jan Mittermeier, manager of John Wayne Airport; former Huntington Beach City Councilman Wes Bannister, who ran unsuccessfully for state insurance commissioner in 1990; and former Garden Grove Unified School District Supt. Ed Dundon.

Times staff writer Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this report.