Home Savings Parent Names New President

Charles R. Rinehart was named president and chief operating officer on Tuesday of H. F. Ahmanson, parent of Home Savings of America, putting him in line for the top job at the Los Angeles thrift holding company.

Rinehart, 42, who has been president and chief executive of Avco Financial Services in Irvine, fills a job that has been vacant for nearly one year in the wake of the departure last December of Mario J. Antoci to run Stockton-based American Savings Bank for investor Robert M. Bass.

The hiring puts Rinehart in line for the chief executive job now held by Richard H. Deihl, 61. Deihl, however, is expected to remain chairman and chief executive for several more years. Ahmanson has no mandatory retirement age, a spokeswoman said.

“I’m 61 and feel 30, so I plan to be around for a while,” Deihl said in an interview.

The job of president, which also includes running Home Savings of America, the nation’s largest savings and loan, has been handled by Deihl since Antoci left.

Rinehart’s hiring is the second time in eight months Ahmanson has gone outside the company to hire a top-ranked executive. In March, Ahmanson hired Jack A. Frazee, former chief financial officer at Union Bank, as executive vice president and chief financial officer.

“It is interesting because it suggests that there isn’t the depth in the major thrifts in management once you get beyond the top people,” said Peter Treadway, a savings and loan analyst at Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. in New York.

Deihl said Rinehart, who begins Dec. 1, was hired because Ahmanson was looking for someone young but who had broad experience and had been chief executive of a company.

Home Savings is considered by securities analysts to be one of the nation’s best-managed thrifts, although its earnings in the nine months ended Sept. 30 fell 5% from a year earlier to $128.1 million. In addition, Home Savings has been trimming its staff in an effort to cut costs in the wake of the federal thrift legislation that will require savings and loans to maintain higher capital levels as a cushion against loses.