Parker Pen seeks S&L in California

The Parker Pen Company is aiming for a bigger stake in the banking and savings-and-loan fields. And this means more than just seeing additional use of its writing instruments in financial institutions.

The Janesville, Wis., company, through its subsidiary, First Deposit Corporation of San Francisco, is seeking to acquire 100 percent of the voting stock of the Redding (Calif.) Savings & Loan Association. The four-year-old, one-office S&L has about $8 million in assets.

This move follows First Deposit's purchase last fall of a majority interest in Citizens National Bank, Tilton, N.H. The bank has about $5 million in assets.

Parker Pen, which has indicated it plans a major move into the financial services industry, acquired First Deposit last April, about a month after it was established. The pen company turned First Deposit into a research-and-development unit, focusing on consumer financial services.

Albert Kahr, president of First Deposit, is a former consultant with Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, Calif. He is widely credited with designing the cash-management account introduced four years ago by Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., the brokerage firm. The cash-management account allows stock brokerage customers to make withdrawals and deposits, much like bank or savings-and-loan accounts.