Coulson maps conservative course, makes no waves at GlenFed's helm.

Coulson maps conservative course, makes no waves at GlenFed's helm

Norman M. Coulson has a 7-foot map of California hanging on a wall of his office. Red dots show where Glendale Federal branches are located, and yellow dots mark sites once owned by Guarantee Financial Corp., a $3 billion (assets) thrift that Coulson's company bought last October.

As president and chief executive of GlenFed Inc., the nation's fifth largest savings and loan holding company, Coulson is proud of that map and the battles he won to earn its markings.

"I've come to bat a couple of times and lost because I wasn't willing to pay the price," he says of other prospective acquisitions. "But we saw a tremendous potential with Guarantee."

Coulson had to outbid a half dozen other prospective buyers for the Fresno-based thrift, as well as fight with his company's biggest shareholders, who were not pleased with the price, GlenFed was paying.

Coulson generally is not much of a fighter. He is a tall, affable man who has spent his entire professional career at GlenFed, the parent of $23 billion (assets) Glendale Federal Savings and Loan Association. Or, more precisely, he spent two years at First Federal Savings of San Pedro (which in 1959 was acquired by Glendale Federal) and he never left.

When talking about his road to success, Coulson says, "I've outlasted just about everyone else here."

Indeed, he worked his way through the ranks, starting as a management trainee. As the company's marketing director, he says his claim to fame was the short-lived slogan "Umpteen ways to save."

He's been involved with such earthshaking decisions at GlenFed as changing the company's fiscal year end. GlenFed closes its books at the end of June, because the company's accountants promised a discount if GlenFed would book their time during low season.

Needless to say, Coulson is not exactly flashy.

When one analyst - a Coulson fan - was asked what makes GlenFed's top manager stand out from the crowd, he paused and said: "He's taller than most of them."

Coulson readily admits that neither he nor his thrift are highfliers.

"We are not a flashy management. We are a solid management," Coulson says. "We don't want to jeopardize this company as some other (thrift managers) have done with their companies."

That stodginess, say analysts, is perhaps one of the best reasons for his company's recent successes.

"The savings and loan business is not an exciting business," says Joseph Jolson, a savings and loan analyst with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. "What makes (Coulson) stand apart? That's a tough question compared to what it would be in another industry. But he's brought the company a long way."

Indeed, Jolson says that when Coulson began running the thrift in 1984 it was in sorry shape. Goodwill - an accounting catchall of intangible assets - far exceeded the company's net worth. Loan losses were high, as were operating expenses. And revenues consisted primarily of non-recurring gains from the sale of loans and loan fees, Jolson says.

"If you look at the company today, costs are down and under control. The percentage of their income coming from loan fees is low, and their net worth has been increased substantially relative to the goodwill," Jolson says. "Coulson is a good man and he has been a good manager."

Caution is Coulson's credo.

"We don't like surprises," he says. "That's a rule around here. No surprises."

Notably, some complain that GlenFed's cautions philosophy makes the thrift rather slow-moving. In automated tellers, for example, GlenFed only recently decided to start installing the machines that became popular in California nearly a decade ago.

Coulson says that is partly because Glendale Federal moved with uncharacteristic quickness on automation at first, failed, and was concerned about trying again.

"We were the first company in California to put in a point-of-sale system, called Handi-Money, in Smith's Food Kings," Coulson says. "We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach grocery clerks how to handle these things, but customers were just not ready for it. That slowed us down."

Now Coulson says his thrift is in the process of installing 40 new automated teller machines, and, while he's considered additional forays into the point-of-sale market, he's cautious.

"I would like to try it again," he says. "But I would want to make sure that POS (point-of-sale) is necessity."

Cutting costs, making prudential loan decisions and trying to provide good customer service are not exactly exciting moves, but in corporate America it is profit, not excitement that counts. And the realm of net income is decidedly more thrilling at GlenFed these days.

In fiscal 1987, the company earned nearly $149 million, up 69 percent from a year ago. Year-end 1986 earnings of $88.3 million jumped 59 percent from $55.6 million in 1985, and 1985 profits were 30 percent richer than 1984 profits.

Analysts predict that the company is poised to outpace its competition in fiscal 1988 as well.

"We think their stock will outperform the market over the next 12 months," says Jolson. Both Montgomery Securities and the competing investment house of Shearson Lehman Hutton are advising clients to buy GlenFed shares.

So, Coulson says that his job is to teach Wall Street the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare." Slow movement is sometimes best.