A Bay Area S&L; was hit by heavy withdrawals.

Several hundred worried depositors withdrew their savings from San Francisco’s Chinatown branch of United Bank SSB, one of the nation’s largest minority-owned financial institutions. Banking regulators in San Francisco issued a statement to depositors in English and Chinese assuring them that the S&L; was solvent and that all deposits are insured up to $100,000 per account. The deposit withdrawals followed the closure of a bank in New York’s Chinatown over the weekend and United Bank’s announcement last week that it lost $651,000 in the first quarter because of problem real estate development loans.