ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Popejoy Lauded for Guiding S & L Through Troubled Times in 1980s : Search: Supporters say his skills in helping keep American afloat would serve him well as county’s interim CEO.

Friends and business associates who knew William J. Popejoy during his mid-1980s stint as chairman of a troubled savings and loan describe him as a logical candidate for the tough task of serving as Orange County’s interim chief executive officer.

Popejoy “provided calm and measured leadership to the old American Savings & Loan in 1984 when the institution faced financial crisis,” said Shannon Ann Fairbanks, former chief of staff of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

The banking executive “calmed Wall Street jitters, instituted sensible management procedures and opened up constructive dialogue with the regulators to create the sound base upon which the bank’s current profit has been built.”

Popejoy, 56, “is absolutely perfect for the job,” said MerrillButler, a longtime business associate and friend. “He has a great ability to bring diverse people together. People like him, they trust him. And, he has a high sense of moral responsibility.”

Popejoy is one of several executives under review by Orange County supervisors, who are expected to soon appoint an interim chief executive officer to run the county. Other possible candidates include businessman Sanford Sigoloff, who has helped turn around several bankrupt companies, former Unocal Chairman Richard Stegemeier and retired Garden Grove School District Superintendent Ed Dundon.

Popejoy, who remains active in a local real estate development company, is expected to have his first meeting with supervisors on Tuesday. He said that his interest in the job is fueled by a “civic sense of duty.”

“If they were looking for someone to be a test pilot for a jet, that’s not me,” said Popejoy, who has volunteered to serve as chief executive without compensation.

“I’ve dealt with regulators, unions, derivatives, education, finance, all the things that would help,” he said. “I can afford to spend the time on this, and I’m not interested in it because of the money.”

Popejoy, who with his wife, Nancy, has lived in Newport Beach for nearly 15 years, “has a great sense of gratitude for being able to live in Orange County and enjoy the benefits of the county,” Butler said. “His reward for doing this would not be in the money but for doing something to help the county of Orange.”

Popejoy said that he views the task as “a civic duty . . . I wouldn’t accept money for it. If you come into the job with that motivation--how much money can I make--then you’ve got the wrong person.”

Popejoy, who once served as president of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., known as Freddie Mac, entered the media spotlight 11 years ago when federal regulators appointed him as successor to Charles Knapp, the aggressive chairman of troubled American Savings & Loan and its Irvine parent company, Financial Corp. of America.

Popejoy, regulators said, helped to keep the institution alive despite a massive run on deposits. American Savings was sold to an investor group led by Texas billionaire Robert M. Bass in 1988. But the price tag was high: regulators were forced to pour $1.7 billion into the troubled thrift to keep it afloat.

“Bill wasn’t able to save American for its stockholders, but he certainly saved American taxpayers billions of dollars,” said Butler, a former American board member.

Critics, however, have contended that Popejoy’s business strategy at the time added to American’s problems.

“I wasn’t particularly impressed with his banking skills,” said one former banking industry executive. “He was a very smooth guy, very charming. But I didn’t sense a whole lot of substance.”

“He is able to charm people,” said the executive, who asked to remain anonymous. “But I have to question whether he has the substance to carry off that kind of (chief executive’s) job.”

David A. Gill, a bankruptcy trustee for Financial Corp. of America, alleged in 1990 that Popejoy and federal regulators were ill-equipped to manage the S&L; and that they drained American of its value.

But Gill said Friday that Popejoy was simply a necessary party to the lawsuit he filed on behalf of FCA. “In my dealings with him, he was bright, alert, astute and honest,” Gill said.

Popejoy won high praise from Bernard Carl, a principal in the Bass holding company that owns the renamed American Savings Bank. Carl led the negotiating team that bid on American and watched over Popejoy’s shoulder for a year because “what Popejoy did was crucially important to our continued interest in buying the thrift,” he said.

“He did an absolutely remarkable management job in the most adverse circumstances possible,” Carl said. “I came away impressed, and Bob Bass was both impressed and thankful.”

Bass was so thankful that, after the acquisition, he gave Popejoy a mint-condition 1957 Chevrolet for joining the board and agreeing to work with the Bass organization for a few years.

Once the nation’s largest thrift, the original American Savings suffered for so long from a multitude of loan and securities problems and was the subject of so many negative news stories, Carl said, that employees thought its name was “Troubled American Savings & Loan.”

“He was a miraculous leader to keep morale up and to keep the management team together,” Carl said.

In addition, Popejoy brought in experts to help him deal with the thrift’s battered portfolio of loans and securities and did a better job than anyone could have expected, Carl said. “If you talk to regulators, they’ll tell you that his holding the place together averted a fairly significant crisis in the deposit insurance fund,” he said.

Even Popejoy’s detractors acknowledged that his strategies were subject to intense scrutiny--and the apparent approval--of federal regulators who maintained offices in American’s corporate headquarters.

Fairbanks, now a partner with a Washington investment company, credits Popejoy with reversing “a legacy of increasing hostility with financial regulators” created by his predecessor, Knapp.

“The bank board brought Bill Popejoy in because he was very highly thought of,” said Mary Ellen Taylor, now an official with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a Washington agency that oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Assn., a government-sponsored mortgage corporation. “He walked into a big mess (in 1984), and for my money that’s a good sort of a war to have lived through if you’re looking to do the Orange County job.”