Coast Federal Bank

Coast Federal Bank is negotiating with Hughes Aircraft Co. to buy the aerospace firm's sprawling Canoga Park campus to use as a headquarters after the research facility is shut down later this year. Hughes will shut down missile engineering operations at the 86-acre facility Oct. 7 as part of a corporate restructuring that is moving many workers to a plant in Tucson.

Bank merger after bank merger. My own bank, Coast Federal Bank, is now Home Savings and is to become something else by the end of the year. Now, with the Bank of America merger, I can't help but wonder if we still have antitrust laws. I don't remember when they went out the window. MARJORIE L. SCHWARTZ Los Angeles

Bank merger after bank merger. My own bank, Coast Federal Bank, is now Home Savings and is to become something else by the end of the year. Now, with the Bank of America merger, I can't help but wonder if we still have antitrust laws. I don't remember when they went out the window. MARJORIE L. SCHWARTZ Los Angeles

Thank you Bob Hope and Ahmanson Land Co. for finally motivating me to seek new home mortgages for two properties. I could never live with myself knowing my two Home Savings loans would acknowledge my support of the Ahmanson Ranch development. We in the west are heartsick over this deal. Couldn't you have just donated this land to the conservancy and have great honors bestowed? I urge everyone to support the Save Open Space group by cutting any ties they have with Home Savings and newly acquired Coast Federal Bank.

Home Savings of America Buys More Branches: Home Savings of America has completed the acquisition of Coast Federal Bank's eight branches in Central California. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The Irwindale-based company said the eight Coast branches have deposits totaling about $258 million. Home Savings of America is the main subsidiary of H. F. Ahmanson & Co., and Coast Federal is the principal unit of Coast Savings Financial Inc.

Ahmanson to Buy 8 Coast Branches: Coast Savings Financial Inc. said that its Coast Federal Bank unit signed a definitive agreement to sell eight Central Valley branches, with deposits totaling $275 million, to H. F. Ahmanson & Co.'s Home Savings of America unit. Terms were not disclosed. Four of the Coast branches are in Fresno, two in Visalia and one each in Tulare and Sanger, Calif. The acquisition is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 1992, subject to regulatory approval.

Ross Marquand Blakely, civic leader and former head of Coast Federal Savings and Loan, has died. He was 79. Blakely died Saturday in his home in San Marino of cancer. He spent his entire career with Coast, which is now known as Coast Federal Bank, rising from management trainee in 1946 to president and chief executive in 1951. He was named chairman of the board in 1972 and served until his retirement in 1987.

The FBI is looking for a serial robber who held up a Camarillo bank Wednesday morning. The man is also believed to have robbed a bank Tuesday night in Marina del Rey and two other banks since Dec. 30, said Special Agent Gary Auer, who supervises the Ventura office of the FBI. Wearing a gray long-sleeved hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans, the man entered Coast Federal Bank at 5291 Mission Oaks Blvd. in Camarillo just before noon Wednesday and handed a note to a teller, Auer said.

A college soccer star from Newbury Park and her boyfriend have pleaded guilty to federal charges in the robbery of a Westlake Village bank days before Christmas. Tabetha Sue Garibay, 21 pleaded guilty in federal court April 22 to one count of driving a getaway car after the robbery. In pleading guilty, she admitted that she and her boyfriend, Todd Hoult, 23, participated in the Dec. 14 takeover robbery of Coast Federal Bank.

A serial bank robber dubbed the San Juan Surfer, known for his trademark baseball cap worn backward and sunglasses, is believed to be the one who robbed a Coast Federal Bank branch Tuesday. About 2:30 p.m., a man slipped a teller a note that read, "I have a gun, put $7,000 in the envelope," Police Sgt. Barry Case said. The clerk grabbed an undisclosed amount of money, put it in the envelope and handed it to the man, who drove away on a motorcycle heading south on Brookhurst Street.

A controversial proposal to build a Home Depot in Granada Hills at the corner of Chatsworth Street and Zelzah Avenue has been scuttled. Property owner Coast Federal Bank announced Thursday that it had halted negotiations to sell two-thirds of the site to Home Depot. The chain would have been the anchor store in a proposed shopping center.

Community leaders last week heralded the opening of a Coast Federal Bank home loan office in the historic Dunbar Hotel, noting that it is the first major lending institution to locate in the area in years. "The key thing here is that Coast Federal Bank has made a commitment to come into the area, and we have a community here with dire banking needs," said Anthony Scott, executive director of the Dunbar Economic Development Corp., which helped coordinate the move.

Mayor Richard Riordan on Tuesday announced the sale of 40 acres of the closed Hughes Aircraft Co. research facility to Coast Federal Bank in an unusual transaction that was brokered by a nonprofit corporation created by Riordan to assist local business.