ASU Research E-Magazine: Tales of Corporate Greed

Bondholders who lost their life savings in the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan probably would be happy if every last trace of the financial dealings of Charles Keating and American Continental Corp. were shredded and burned.

But, if that had happened, a wealth of information valuable for research in many areas would have been lost to students and scholars forever.

Thanks to U.S. District Court Judge Richard M. Bilby, thousands of records documenting the rise and fall of the American Continental Corp. are now safe in the Arizona Collection of ASU Libraries. The records are available for access by the public.

After Keating was convicted of racketeering, fraud, and conspiracy at a federal court in Los Angeles, Bilby felt that the documents of American Continental Corp. had continuing historic value. He called ASU and asked if the library wanted to house the records, says Rob Spindler, acting head of the department of archives and manuscripts at ASU Libraries.

On June 29, 1994, Bilby ordered that the records be transported to ASU, and the Archives staff began preparing to receive the mountains of material.

ASU archivists sifted through mountains of material and selected 1,700 boxes to bring to ASU for the permanent archival collection. The rest of the documents were shredded.

In addition to the 1,700 boxes of American Continental Corp. records, ASU also received deposition transcripts and videotapes from the bankruptcy proceedings and civil litigation adjudication in Tucson.

After Bilby’s order, Keating’s accounting firms were given one year to ask for a delay of the release of any material that might reveal their trade secrets or competitive information. None responded, Spindler says. Judge Bilby has opened the depositions for research, although some restrictions on duplication of the materials are still in force.

Now, graduate students in accounting an other interested researchers are studying the corporate and court records.

“Looking at what we have, it’s clear that the documents are essential for examining the failure of Lincoln Savings and Loan. But we see much more,” Spindler adds.

“The documents are a critical source for documenting the boom and bust real estate cycles of Arizona in the 1980s,” he explains. The collection also includes soil analysis studies, traffic management, environmental impact studies, and marketing materials. There is a substantial amount of design and construction documentation for The Phoenician, the glittering resort built by Keating.

“It’s a wealth of information for a broad range of research, from real estate to investment banking in the Valley of the Sun,” Spindler says. “It’s a collection that says a lot about land development and entrepreneurship in central Arizona during the 1980s.” —Judith Smith