Bank of New England Corp. named Lawrence K. Fish as its chairman and chief executive Friday as officials continued restructuring the troubled company in an effort to restore financial health and public confidence. ``While there has been considerable speculation about candidates, Mr. Fish was our first choice, and the only one to receive an offer from us,'' Peter L. Scott, head of the executive search, said in a statement. Analysts generally praised the decision to hire Fish, a former Bank of Boston Corp. executive vice president, but they warned he might not be able to rescue the bank. ``He's coming into a situation that's very grave,'' said Gerard Cassidy, an analyst with Tucker Anthony Inc. ``If the economy does not cooperate, a miracle worker is going to have a hard time. A major part of it is out of his hands.'' Fish, whose hiring was expected for more than a week, replaces Walter Connolly, who oversaw the bank's dramatic growth in the 1980s but was ousted this year after the company suffered massive losses. Much of the trouble has been traced to the bank's aggressive lending practices during a construction boom in the mid-1980s. When the economy slowed near the end of the decade, the real estate market tumbled, and the bank was saddled with a mountain of problem loans. Last month, the bank announced it lost $1.11 billion in 1989 and disclosed it was reviewing financial data from previous quarters to see whether larger provisions against bad loans should have been made earlier in the year. The bank also is operating under federal consent orders signed last week, which place the corporation under strict government oversight while it takes steps to fix its problems. Under the orders, the bank must tighten its lending practices, withhold stock dividends and review the work of its senior level management to see where changes should be made. ``(Fish) has to come down like a ton of bricks on some situations,'' Cassidy said. ``It's fresh blood. He can come in and make the decisions.'' Fish, 45, left Bank of Boston in 1988 to become president and chief operating officer of Columbia Savings & Loan Association in Beverly Hills, Calif. Part of his job at Columbia was to produce a plan to make the institution less reliant on high risk, high yield junk bonds. Fish resigned last August, and since then Columbia has suffered with a crash in the junk bond market. The newly appointed chairman said in a prepared statement Friday that he believed in the Bank of New England's ``soundness and strength,'' but acknowledged the road to financial recovery could be long. ``We ... have significant problems. I plan to be thoughtful but to make decisions promptly,'' said Fish, who was also named chairman and CEO of the Bank of New England's Massachusetts subsidiary.
