Saturday, April 26, 2008

Subprime News: Countrywide Co-Founder Having to Scrape by with a Meager $132 Million in earnings


And now for your heartwarming, good guy story of the day. From the Guardian:
"A key figure behind the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, Angelo Mozilo, made $132m (£61m) last year despite huge losses on unsustainable home loans at his Countrywide Financial empire.
Mozilo, 70, Countrywide's co-founder and chief executive, saw his pay and bonus fall 79% to $10.8m. But he made $121.5m by cashing in stock and share options - transactions that are under investigation by the securities and exchange commission. Before the sub-prime crisis erupted, Countrywide was the top US mortgage lender with 9m loans worth $1.5tn. But as clients failed to keep up repayments, the Californian firm lost $704m and laid off 11,000 staff. Amid rumours of bankruptcy, Countrywide agreed to a takeover by Bank of America in January. BoA plans to scrap the Countrywide name."

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