One Bancorp loses $145 million

PORTLAND — The One Bancorp, struggling to recover from its bad loans, said Friday its losses for 1989 were about $145 million, or $22 million higher than it originally estimated.

More real estate loans have gone bad and the value of properties has dropped, said President and Chief Executive Officer Vincent E. Furey Jr.

But Furey predicted that the troubled banking company will sell off a number of its assets during the second quarter of 1990. Under an agreement reached with federal banking regulators, The One is supposed to sell Southstate Bank for Savings, in Massachusetts; The Bank of Hartford, in Connecticut; and five Winslow Investment Co. offices and nine Maine Savings Bank branches in Maine.

“We’ve got interested parties on all of those opportunities,” Furey said in a telephone interview, adding that he expects The One will be able to announce sales of some assets during the next three months.

“I think all of them could fall into that category,” Furey said. He declined to identify any of the potential buyers.

The planned sales will leave The One with just one bank, Maine Savings Bank, which got the holding company into trouble to begin with.

In announcing its revised losses for 1989, The One said in its statement Friday that it lost some $70 million in the fourth quarter of 1989, also about $22 million higher than the earlier numbers had shown.

“Information developed since our earlier release made it prudent for the company to increase its provision for loan losses on commercial real estate by $24 million over the amount announced in February, and to take further writedowns on loans and investments,” Furey said in the statement. “The earlier announcement was made to ensure that financial results required to be filed with banking regulators were available to the general public.”

Maine Banking Superintendent H. Donald DeMatteis issued a statement Friday that said the additional losses for 1989 would have turned up in The One’s first-quarter results for 1990 had the adjustments not been made. DeMatteis was out of his office and unavailable for further comment, a secretary said.

“We’ve just compressed about five quarters of results and bad news into the fourth quarter of last year,” Furey said. Furey, citing standard policy at The One, declined to predict how the first-quarter results will turn out.

Furey said The One’s prospects for recovery will hinge on the performance of the real estate market over the next several years. He said that things have picked up some of late as the company has been able to move some properties.