The battle for control of Corona-based Vineyard National Bancorp’s board has gotten hotter.
A majority of Vineyard’s shareholders approved a change to allow for more director candidates to stand for election at Vineyard’s annual meeting in June.
Shareholders Norman Morales, the ousted chief executive and largest individual shareholder, and Jon Salmanson, a longtime stockholder and stockbroker, pressed for the change to allow them to run a slate of candidates.
Jim LeSieur, interim chief executive of Vineyard, opposed the move to allow more director candidates.
“We are, of course, disappointed by this result in light of the objective recommendations made by all of the independent proxy advisory services,” he said.
Analysts who follow Vineyard have said Morales likely was forced out after a disagreement with directors.
Vineyard, which loaned heavily to homebuilders in the Inland Empire, has been under pressure from bad loans.
Sources believe that if Vineyard falls back under Morales’ control, he’ll move the bank’s headquarters to OC, where he and some Vineyard executives live.
Vineyard has $2.5 billion in assets, operating 16 branches in Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Clarita and Ventura counties.
Its publicly traded stock was down 3.5% at the close of New York trading, giving it a market value of $59 million.
