Paige V Simpson

Only a month after digesting the $17.5-million purchase of an Anaheim bank, Citizens Holdings in Costa Mesa said Wednesday that it has tentatively agreed to buy Rancho Santa Fe National Bank for $12 million in cash. The deal would add a third bank to Citizens Holdings and bring it one step closer to creating a planned coastal banking system stretching from Long Beach to the Mexican border. "We'd like to have five or six banks with a total of about $1 billion in assets," said Paige V.

Blaming new federal banking policies, Citizens Holdings said Wednesday that it has terminated negotiations to acquire two area banks in deals that would have made the Newport Beach firm the largest banking company in Orange County. The new policies also killed Citizens' plan to build a chain of mid-size banks that would operate autonomously with their names and managements intact, said Paige V. Simpson, a company director.

Richard Pratt, the Australian industrialist who once planned on turning his holdings in two Orange County banks into a $1-billion banking chain along the Southern California coast, has instead put the banks up for sale. Six to 10 institutions, including Wells Fargo Bank, are negotiating for the acquisition of Citizens Bank of Costa Mesa and El Camino Bank in Anaheim, two of the larger and well-operated banks in the county.

Two Orange County banks--El Camino in Anaheim and the troubled Bank of San Clemente--will be taken over by different investors in separate agreements reached Thursday. In a letter of intent, Citizens Holdings, the parent company of Citizens Bank of Costa Mesa, said it will pay $16.3 million in cash to acquire all the stock of El Camino Bancorp, the holding company of El Camino Bank.

Wells Fargo & Co., continuing its yearlong bank buying spree, has agreed to pay at least $48 million to buy an Anaheim bank holding company and its two units, Citizens Bank of Costa Mesa and El Camino Bank in Anaheim, officials for the two parties said Friday. The purchase price of Citizens Holdings can go up to $50.

Rancho Santa Fe National Bank has signed a letter of intent to be acquired by Costa Mesa-based Citizens Holdings for $12 million in cash, Rancho Santa Fe president James A. Boyce said Wednesday. Rancho Santa Fe shareholders would receive $21.70 per share if the deal is completed. The bank has a book value of about $7 million, Boyce said. In recent trading, Rancho Santa Fe stock has sold for about $14. Rancho Santa Fe National has branches in San Diego, Escondido and in Rancho Santa Fe.

Wells Fargo Bank has great hopes for its latest effort to woo small companies as customers. But the giant bank is finding that it's tough to hold onto the business accounts at two small Orange County banks that it bought earlier this year. The San Francisco bank, with $56.2 billion in assets, kicked off Small Business Week on Monday with an 11-week campaign to attract small companies with bonus coupons, new benefits, seminars and promises of great service.

Acquisition-minded Citizens Holdings has reached a tentative agreement to buy Eldorado Bancorp in Laguna Hills for $34 million in cash, a deal that would create Orange County's largest banking company, the two firms said Tuesday. Newport Beach-based Citizens will pay $15 a share to pick up the nine-branch operation of Eldorado's subsidiary, 16-year-old Eldorado Bank in Tustin, according to the letter of intent, which was signed late Monday.

The very name and title--Paige V. Simpson, bank president--conjure up the image of an Oxford-educated financier, but the blunt-speaking man from the small town of Atwood, Kan., never even graduated from college. Simpson, however, has worked his way up from messenger boy to bank president during his 50-year career. In the process, he has become the dean of Orange County banking. More than ever, his knowledge and experience are being put to the test.

From the day Corporate Bank opened in November, 1982, it has catered to a select group of small but prosperous companies and their employees. That business strategy has made the bank consistently profitable and well-regarded within the industry. It also ensured that Corporate grew slowly, another part of the original business plan drafted by founding officers Gary Wrigley and Richard Brown. "We don't feel that bigger is better," said Wrigley, the bank's chief executive.