Angelo Mozilo Biography, Wikipedia, Net Worth, Wiki, Obituary, House, Today

Angelo Mozilo Biography, Wikipedia, Net Worth, Wiki, Obituary, House, Today – Countrywide Financial’s founder, Angelo Robert Mozilo, passed away this past weekend from natural causes, according to his family. Age-wise, he was 84.

Despite being a person of great controversy, Mozilo was a pioneer in the mortgage market. Insiders understand what an enormous force this man was, regardless of how outsiders may view him, according to a LinkedIn post by his son Eric Mozilo. He devoted his life to helping millions of Americans achieve the American dream of homeownership throughout the course of his 50-year career. First and foremost, he pushed vehemently that minorities be represented.

No business, even as of today, has even come close to matching Countrywide’s scale and domination. The majority of today’s mortgage sector leaders, whether they are workers, executives, or even business partners, have ties to Angelo and Countrywide. Finally, he was the ideal father a son could have.

The brazen and charming Mozilo, a native New Yorker and the son of a butcher from the Bronx, co-founded Countrywide in 1969 with his previous mentor David Loeb after earning a Bachelor of Science degree from Fordham University. Countrywide had a reputation for originating low-risk loans for the majority of its existence. In 1991–1992, Mozilo presided over the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).

After Loeb retired in 2000, he took full control of the business. He put it in development mode, and by 2004, it had surpassed Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual to become the largest mortgage provider in the country. Each work week in 2006, Countrywide added about $10 billion in new loans. According to the business, by the end of 2006, its five-year total return was 340%, about ten times greater than the S&P 500.

When Mozilo noticed that his company was losing clients to rivals in the late 1990s, Countywide embraced the subprime mortgage lending strategy that would eventually cause the housing crisis in 2008. And they carried it out on a grand scale.

Despite publicly defending the firm’s lending practises and claiming to be an advocate for minority homeownership, Mozilo was aware of the lax underwriting standards, according to records made public as part of government settlements.

“On Sunday, I met a mortgage salesman from a hamlet close to Troy, Michigan, who informed me that Countrywide is the only lender he works with. I was first happy at the news until he explained the reason. In a 2005 letter to a colleague at Countrywide, he claimed that the region he serves is severely economically disadvantaged and that the only way he can qualify his borrowers is through the pay option ARM.

“I’ve heard this tale from mortgage brokers several times, who use the pay option for really marginal applicants in order to generate volume and compensation. We simply cannot and will not allow our business to be harmed by this prevalent behaviour, thus it is crucial that we take responsibility for our own actions as we have no control over how others behave.

Countywide started to run out of money when home prices started to decline in 2006 and investors stopped buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in 2007. Mozilo sold his business to Bank of America for $4 billion while Countrywide was in need of immediate cash and was already the target of investigations into its mortgage lending operations. In the end, the bank would have lost $50 billion on the transaction.