Thursday, April 28, 2011
Countrywide CEO - Angelo Mozilo
The once ranked top 25 people to blame for the financial crisis, Angelo Mozilo, the son of a butcher and raised in the Bronx, had a vision over 40 years ago. He was able to join with a partner and make his dream a reality, he grew the company into a Fortune 100 diversified financial services company, and was able to grow internationally as well, providing services on 3 continents. He was known to be a fierce competitor which is what sparked his success. Not all would remain rosey for him, however, he would soon find himself in the middle of great controversy. He caught the eye of many investors in early 2007 when he started selling off large amounts of stock options, which to many, is a huge indicator of "problems on the horizon." It wasn't long after that they made the notorious "watch list", which was an indication to us mortgage folk, that a company was about to sink or go out of business. The general consensus was "Move your loans now, or you won't get what your borrower needs." Stocks plummeted and shortly thereafter the bank found itself heading into bankruptcy court. Mozilo left Countrywide after it was acquired by Bank of America as a bailout purchase. Bank of America ended up having to clean up the mess that was left behind, spending approximately $8.7 billion in order to settle claims of predatory lending.
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Nice blog, it felt to me this whole financial business is "make or break" field, and many tried to"make" and many went "broke" and one example was Countrywide. It sounded like the CEO of Countrywide also co-founded this company, so many years later he saw it go bankrupcy, i kinda feel for the guy, but, of course he should have known what he was getting into. I guess, when you are in a fierce competition to be on top of things, you loose sight of things that matter at the end.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he should've stayed in the family business instead of butchering peoples finances! What a bummer. In my research on Citigroup I saw that Countrywide were financed by them and were one of the major subprime lenders.
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