Savings And Loans

General Motors Corp., the world's largest auto maker, will own a savings and loan after regulators cleared the company to establish a thrift named GMAC Bank. GM already is a large financial services provider through its General Motors Acceptance Corp. auto financing unit and its GMAC Mortgage Corp. home loan subsidiary. GM has been in the mortgage business since 1985 and last year made loans to 1.6 million U.S.

Mutual fund giant Fidelity won permission from the Office of Thrift Supervision to operate a savings bank that will offer personal trust services to customers. Fidelity will become the latest in a string of companies to obtain new federal savings and loan charters in recent months. Fidelity already engages in corporate and personal trust business through its Fidelity Management Trust Co. subsidiary. The new Fidelity Personal Trust Co.

Jeff Lane says associations are leftist institutions and an un-American assault on private property rights (Letters, Aug. 29). He is right. They are also a very risky investment. Home associations are usually run by a group of volunteer homeowners and some management companies who have little or no training in handling the corporate formalities of multimillion-dollar nonprofit corporations (which is what you are investing in) holding the life investments of many of its members. We often invest far less in banks or savings and loans that are insured by the FDIC.

An Irvine-based commercial lender that was planning to launch a new thrift in Orange County said Monday it has decided instead to buy a stake in an existing savings and loan. Financial Institutional Partners Mortgage Co.

Costa Mesa home builder Standard Pacific Corp. said it has completed the sale of its savings and loan unit to American General Corp. for $8.6 million. Standard Pacific said it will resume offering mortgages to its home buyers through a joint venture between its Family Lending Services unit and Norwest Bank. American General said it will rename the savings and loan American General Bank FSB.

California Federal Bank, a subsidiary of Golden State Bancorp Inc., said it will appeal a judge's award in a case against the U.S. government for a broken promise of special regulatory treatment. U.S. Claims Judge Robert H. Hodges said CalFed was entitled to $23.3 million from the government in its "supervisory goodwill" lawsuit. The bank sought more than $1.5 billion. The award "falls far short of CalFed's actual damages," the bank said in a statement.