BankAmerica to Buy S&L; in Texas : Banking: It will acquire virtually all of the branches and deposits of First Gibraltar Bank for $110 million.

BankAmerica Corp. continued its aggressive push across the Southwest by agreeing Monday to buy the largest thrift in Texas for $110 million from financier Ronald O. Perelman.

BankAmerica, the nation’s second-largest bank, agreed to buy virtually all of the branches and deposits of First Gibraltar Bank, a onetime failed thrift in Dallas that Perelman bought in 1988 in one of the most controversial deals ever orchestrated by regulators.

In another major banking deal disclosed Monday, First Union Corp., a major regional bank based in Charlotte, N.C., agreed to buy Dominion Bankshares Corp. of Roanoke, Va., in an $852-million deal.

First Gibraltar’s sale to BankAmerica has been speculated about for several months. Exactly how much Perelman will reap from his convoluted, four-year investment is unclear, although analysts are certain he has more than recouped his investment already.

For $315 million in equity in 1988, Perelman acquired First Gibraltar with the help of about $5 billion in federal assistance and nearly $1 billion in tax benefits. He also managed and sold assets of failed thrifts for the government.

Perelman has already sold for $31.4 million Sooner Federal, a First Gibraltar operation in Oklahoma, to Fourth Financial Corp. in Wichita, Kan., and Bok Financial Corp. in Tulsa. This spring there was some speculation that Perelman would use proceeds from selling First Gibraltar to buy ailing First City Bancorporation in Houston, but many analysts now doubt that scenario.

For BankAmerica, the acquisition comes at a time when it has slowed down its torrid expansion because it is digesting Los Angeles-based Security Pacific Corp., acquired in a $5-billion deal in April that ranks as the nation’s largest bank merger ever.

Bank executives have said they will pause in their acquisition binge for now, but would make an exception in Texas, which they consider an important market for expansion.

BankAmerica entered Texas just last year with the purchase of a small Houston bank. BankAmerica earlier this year bought from federal regulators 111 branches and $13 billion in deposits of the former Sunbelt Savings in Dallas.

In the First Gibraltar acquisition, BankAmerica acquires 130 branches and $7.5 billion in deposits. It is also buying $225 million in business loans and real estate loans, as well as $640 million in consumer loans.

Ronald Mandle, bank analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, said the price BankAmerica is paying is on the low end of the range he had expected.

BankAmerica’s Texas unit will rank second in branches in Texas, and fourth in deposits. The bank is now increasingly competing head-on with some of the nation’s most aggressive regional banks.

In Texas, it now ranks in deposits behind North Carolina’s NationsBank, Banc One of Columbus, Ohio, as well as Texas Commerce Bancshares, a subsidiary of New York’s Chemical Banking.

BankAmerica also named Larry McNabb to head its Texas unit. McNabb has been overseeing the actual meshing of BankAmerica’s operations with Security Pacific.

In an interview, McNabb acknowledged that the Texas market is now highly competitive, but added that the bank is aggressively going after consumer loan business. He said that First Gibraltar, despite being a savings institution, “looks a lot more like a bank than a thrift” because its customers and accounts resemble what one typically finds at a commercial bank.