Consortium With Irvine Firm Wins Major RTC Loan-Servicing Contract : Thrifts: Minority-owned joint venture called Texas Data Control will get $39.7 million over three years to handle portfolio from failed S&Ls;.

An Irvine company and the East Los Angeles Community Union are part of a consortium that has won one of the largest single contracts awarded by the federal agency that is disposing of failed thrift assets.

The Resolution Trust Corp. will pay the joint venture known as Texas Data Control $39.7 million over the next three years to service loans valued at $7.5 billion from failed thrifts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The contract includes two optional one-year extensions.

Texas Data Control is half-owned by TELACU/Carpenter in Irvine, which is itself a joint venture consisting of the East Los Angeles Community Union, a privately funded community-action organization, and Carpenter & Co., a thrift and bank consultant.

Texas Data won in part because it qualified as a minority-owned firm under RTC rules, said Valerie Marshall, an RTC spokeswoman. “We give bonus points for being a minority firm,” she said.

As a 50% owner of TELACU/Carpenter, Latino-operated TELACU has a 25% interest in Texas Data, the minimum required to qualify Texas Data as a minority-owned firm.

The portfolio consists of more than 59,000 business loans, consumer loans and residential and commercial real estate mortgages from all of the failed thrifts in the three-state area.

The RTC, which originally placed the servicing contract with giant Electronic Data Systems in Dallas, decided to open bidding on it after the initial agreement with EDS expired.

Texas Data will not take control of the loans until Nov. 27, Marshall said. In addition, as many as 15,000 more loans worth as much as $500 million may be added to the contract next year, she said.