Spare change: Ill. Banker Urges Community Involvement; OTS Chief Offers

That's his acronym for the "socially conscious unless my money's involved" - people afraid to take a stake in the success of their communities. "The enemy is apathy," says the president of $240 million-asset Success National Bank in Lincolnshire, Ill. Among Sucess National's projects, he says, are medical seminars and support for many charitable, religious, and educational groups, including special checking accounts to nonprofit groups.

*** Jonathan Fiechter, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, says a little name change could go a long way to fixing the image problem of the thrift charter. Echoing calls made before by other industry observers, Mr. Fiechter suggested at the America's Community Bankers convention that if Congress decides to keep a separate charter for thrifts in some form or another, it should be a "community bank charter." That could allow the nation's thrifts to maintain their own identity, while separating the industry from past problems. "There are a lot of people who are just as happy to stay in the thrift business," he said. "If we can find a way to call them community banks, get away from the nomenclature, you'd have a lot of happy CEOs."

*** C. William Landefeld is one of those small-town thrift executives who wears many hats. But he's taking an added job that may force him to put some of them on the rack. Mr. Landefeld, scheduled to become chairman of America's Community Bankers next year, is president and chief executive of Citizens Savings Bank, a $146 million-asset federal savings bank in Normal, Ill. He worries that customers, accustomed to his ever-presence, may be wondering who's minding the store while he's all over the country on association business. His directors, he said with a laugh, "are already nervous." -Barbara F. Bronstien and Jonathan D. Epstein

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