Thursday, February 4, 1988/The Battalion/Page 9 ds for savings and loan feature jcponnally, urge saving for future ■ HOUS I ON (AP) — Former Gov. vs|j[ Jilin Connally, who last month auc- do Va | JMmcd off possessions of a lifetime to lu yto6 ’’W, a| y beg cullers,,, S 3b(Ht; ^'joysi 1 l*asaij irit e J 5 w I tifstl J ■it)’ ij". le n ( (MX) ] Scut; plu a dent in his multimillion-dollar debt, is now urging Texans to save fe financially secure,” Connally says Hi the 30-second segment. I “Well, the future is here and Hings haven’t quite worked out like He’d planned,” he says. “But that’s 1111 ' Investigators: 'ilots need ore warning DALLAS (AP) — Federal Ayi- jition Administration air traffic controllers need to make more frequent broadcasts of severe pveather warnings, investigators laid in concluding their probe of 1986 business jet crash^ that killed seven. The National Transportation Board in Washington said Tues day the FAA, in particular the Dallas Flight Service Station, Jidn’t give warning about severe [weather on the jet’s intended jrouie from Dallas to New Jersey. [The plane crashed near Texar- Ikana. The board said at least two se- Ivere weather notices were in ef- [fect for the plane’s intended [route but the FAA did not pass [that information onto the crew [because an incorrect expiration [time on the weather warning. all right, because there’s no better place than Texas to start over and to save a little something — because you never know what the future might bring.” Connally and his wife, Nellie, completed the sale last week of hun dreds of items, many of them col lected during his years of public service as governor of Texas from 1963 to 1969, Navy Secretary under President John F. Kennedy and Treasury Secretary under President Richard Nixon. The four-day auction in Houston fetched nearly $2.7 million, but the money only puts a dent in what Con nally owes his creditors. He filed for bankruptcy protection in July and owes from $41 million to $128 mil lion in unsecured debts. Connally at first declined to do the commercials, but agreed after meeting with advertising executives of University Savings Association. “The whole idea (for the commer cial) was for impact, to get a Texan who has faced some kind of adver sity,” said Dia Blair, account exec utive for Taylor, Brown 8c Barnhill, who is handling the $3 million cam paign for University Savings. “He was a little weary at first,” Blair said Wednesday. “But once he read the script he agreed with what it said and pretty much considered it a public service announcement. “He wanted people to know to prepare themselves financially for the future because you never know what can happen.” The trio of commercials, which began airing during Sunday’s Super Bowl, also features former Houston Oilers Coach Bum Phillips and Houston restaurateur Ninfa Lau- renzo. The TV commercials will appear throughout the year in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, along with magazine and full-page newspaper advertisements. The amount paid Connally and the others was not disclosed, Blair said. “The message we wanted to get across is two-fold,” said Doug Valde- tero, executive vice president and chief savings officer for University Savings, the state’s fourth-largest thrift with 90 branches. “One is the importance of saving your money and getting back to basics and put ting a little aside for a rainy day or the future. “Second is there’s been a lot of misfortunes in Texas with the oil and financial industry, but we’ve got a can-do attitude that we can start over.” The Connally commercials have brought varied responses to the thrift, Valdetero said. “Some have been negative but most are positive, ” he said, “I got a call this morning from someone who wants a copy of our print ad suitable for framing.” Under bankruptcy laws, Connally is selling all properties except his house and 200 of the 3,400 acres at Picosa Ranch, his homestead in FIo- resville south of San Antonio. The law allows him to keep $30,000 in personal possessions. Federal restructuring plan to lower number of S&Ls WASHINGTON (AP) — A fed eral plan to restructure the crippled Texas savings and loan industry would cut the number of thrifts in the state by one-third in coming years, regulators said Wednesday. Consolidating thrifts and attract ing new capital are the two key goals of the Southwest Plan, developed by Federal Home Loan Bank Board of ficials after two months of analysis. “Consolidation works,” M. Danny Wall, chairman of the bank board, said in revealing the plan Wednes day. “We arrived at this conclusion after extensive analysis. “So now what we find ourselves doing is saying to the industry and the prospective investors, ‘You all come. You all come and make your proposals to us.’ The goal is to blend the 104 insol vent thrifts and 39 ailing institutions with some of the solvent, well-run operations and reduce the overall number of S&Ls in Texas from 281 to 180 or 160, Wall said. About 70 percent of the ailing thrifts have signed consent-to-merge agreements, he said. But that means attracting inves tors willing to put money in an in dustry that has been on its knees for the past several years because of downturns in the oil and real estate markets. The thrift problems in Texas rep resent about one-half of the S&L problems nationwide, Wall said. Rising foreclosures, cases of fraud and mismanagement and a glut of vacant office space contributed to a loss of more than $5 billion for the state’s savings industry in 1987. “During the more than two months we worked to develop the plan, we received expressions of in terest from investors who indicated a desire to bring in more than $1 bil lion in new capital,” Wall said. The costs of eliminating the neg ative net worth of the insolvent thrifts in Texas are in range of $6 billion to $7 billion. Other costs include $2 billion to compensate the consolidated S&Ls for accepting low-yield loans in their portfolio. Funds to cover these costs will come from last year’s $10.8 billion recapitalization of the Federal Sav ings and Loan Insurance Corp. — the fund that insures S&L deposits up to $100,000 — and from ex pected investors. Wall said the bank board will use agency notes rather than cash when possible. The agency also plans to reap its share of profits from consolidated institutions and take an equity posi tion in them to recoup investments. The plan was endorsed by the U.S. League of Savings Institutions, the industry’s largest trade group. “We commend the Federal Home Loan Bank Board,” U.S. League’s Theo Pitt said in a statement. 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