Ousted Board of O.C. Bank to Meet

Ousted directors of American Commerce National Bank plan to meet tonight to determine what they can do, if anything, about Friday’s unprecedented takeover of their 9-year-old bank by federal regulators.

Several directors said that the meeting was called by Gerald J. Garner, the Anaheim bank’s former chairman, whom neither the press nor most directors could reach Monday. Garner said Friday that he would hold a press conference early this week.

Directors were still reeling from the first-ever federal takeover of a bank with a strong level of capital, its final cushion against losses.

Exercising new powers to seize healthy banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency closed the bank Friday afternoon after determining that directors and officers were concealing records, lying and wasting the bank’s finances.

The agency threw out the bank’s eight directors and fired five senior officers. It also notified them that it will take steps to ban them from the banking industry for life for their “weak, abusive and self-serving” activities.

Insured deposits at the one-branch bank were sold to Southern California Bank on Sunday. The multibranched Downey institution reopened the branch as one of its own Monday.

“This is unbelievable, the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard of,” said an angry Dr. Galal S. Gough of Norwalk, one of the ousted board members. “We capitalized the bank with $3.2 million (in 1984), and we’ve made $9 million in eight years that was poured back into the bank.”

He accused regulators of closing the bank because they didn’t like Garner and didn’t like the board of directors for refusing to follow their wishes to fire Garner, who with his wife and fellow director Joan G. Garner controls the biggest single block of stock.

“I’m upset. I’m livid,” Gough said. “If we have any recourse, I’ll take it. And they don’t need to bar me from the banking industry because I never want to get into anything regulated by the (federal) government again.”

Another director, Santa Ana lawyer Duffern H. Helsing, said the takeover came “out of the blue.”

He and Eugene A. Alterman of Hillcrest Jewelers in Fullerton, who was also upset, didn’t want to make further comments until after tonight’s meeting.

Two other directors, Dr. Stanley A. Kaller and Judy Mandel, who is married to Orange County Superior Court Judge Jack K. Mandel, did not return telephone calls Monday. Dr. Norman Charney, the eighth director, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Kaller and Gough are associated with Coast Plaza Doctors Hospital in Norwalk, and Garner holds a seat on the hospital’s board. Also on staff is well-known surgeon Ron Lapin, who is a friend of Garner and shareholder in American Commerce. Lapin is known for his so-called bloodless surgery on Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refuse to accept blood transfusions during surgery.