Recovery bid falls short at Lincoln Bank. (Abraham Lincoln Savings Bank seized by the Office of Thrift Supervision and placed in conservatorship with the Resolution Trust Corp.)

Spector: Past loans too much to overcome

The past caught up with Abraham Lincoln Savings Bank, scuttling a lengthy effort by a Philadelphia investment group to salvage the Dresher institution.

Struggling for 1 1/2 years to recover soured construction loans, Abraham Lincoln, with $189 million in assets, was seized Sept. 19 by the Office of Thrift Supervision and placed in conservatorship with Resolution Trust Corp.

"Evidently the OTS determined there was a lack of capital. It was an insolvent institution," said Esther Hay Smith, the RTC's newly installed managing agent at Abraham Lincoln.

The government action, which stems from authority granted to regulators by Congress in the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, renders futile an effort by an investors group, headed by former Philadelphia lawyer Arthur R. Spector, to turn around the institution.

Nevertheless, management at Abraham Lincoln, which had won control of the institution after a 1988 proxy …