Ernst & Young Fined $1.5 Million: The...

Ernst & Young Fined $1.5 Million: The Ernst & Young accounting firm will pay a $1.5-million fine and one of its Los Angeles partners will be barred from doing audits for a year under a settlement with the state Board of Accountancy over the April, 1989, collapse of Irvine-based Lincoln Savings & Loan and its parent firm, American Continental Corp. Partner Francis J. O’Brien was also placed on probation for three years. He was the regional accounting director in Los Angeles for Arthur Young & Co., one of two major firms that merged last year to form Ernst & Young. Arthur Young’s audit of American Continental in 1987 was the primary document that the state Department of Corporations relied on to approve the company’s request in May, 1988, to continue selling bonds to small investors at Lincoln’s branches.