BancOne is in the hunt for another bank and apparently it wouldn't mind buying one with a mortgage banking unit attached to it. No names are being mentioned yet, but it's no secret that Banc One Mortgage has been growing steadily. The bank is also a large player in the home equity business...
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Countrywide general counsel Sandor E. Samuels recently filed a form 144 to sell 8,837 shares of CCR stock. The sale would gross $363,720 in proceeds, according to Thomson Financial. Countrywide's stock has been rising of late and hit $44 late this week before falling back a bit...
Countrywide, meanwhile, hopes to begin taking deposits in 40 additional branches over the next 18 to 24 months. It has already started taking accounts in four of its California mortgage branches...
Another active inside seller of a mortgage-related stock is Ocwen Financial Corp. director Barry N. Wish who had been selling decent sized chunks of the company since last summer...
In case you haven't heard, John Gibbons, senior vice president of strategy development for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago , has left the bank. Gibbons, a former top official at Freddie Mac could not be reached for comment...
The number one ranked servicer of Ginnie Mae loans at the end of 2001 was Wells Fargo Home Mortgage with $ 69.8 billion on its books. Interestingly, WFHM's GNMA servicing base is less than what it was about two years ago when it serviced $73.4 billion. WFHM has been a production powerhouse so perhaps there's something to the claim that the conventional market -- via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are cherry picking the best low downpayment loans...
WFHM, a source said, produced $22 billion worth of loans in January, a figure the mortgage company would not confirm or deny ...
National Mortgage News is getting ready to publish its top lender list for 2001. Here's an interesting data morsel: Washington Mutual ranked third (behind WFHM and Chase) with $175.5 billion but if the origination volume of Dime Bancorp, and HomeSide are added to the mix, WaMu would rank first with (gulp) $272.5 billion which gives the giant West Coast-based thrift a market share of 13.19%...
Freddie Mac last week dumped Arthur Andersen as its auditor. It case you're keeping track, Freddie is the first mortgage-related firm to dump Andersen. Will others follow suit? The decision by Freddie to go with PricewaterhouseCoopers was made by the company's audit committee which includes former PWC chairman Shaun O'Malley...
